Enhancing one’s physical appearance is also something teenagers are being exposed to through their parents. Well… I was always so against all that. I’ve always admired a woman like Audrey Hepburn, who aged so naturally, and was always so beautiful. Yet here I am, an actress in Hollywood, and I’m finding it something I am starting to think about. Sometimes I pull at my face in the mirror wondering, what if…? Right now though, I’m really into Chinese herbs and I actually get acupuncture needles in my face quite often, which act like a natural facelift.

There seems to be a lot of natural things that we can do to prolong our youth. There is… and talk to me in a couple of years and we’ll see how that’s working out. I really have always been against surgery but I am now going… hmm. Some people are really looking incredible right now and I wonder ‘what did they do?’ and ‘who are they going to?’ It’s just really hard to age on film. I’ve always played younger than I was. When I was 18, I played 14. When I was 20, I played 16.

Body image has become such a huge issue. When out shopping with Zoe how do you deal with it? Oh God, as much as I try really hard not to say it, I do hear myself saying, “Zoe, does my butt look fat in these pants?” I definitely have asked that question many, many times. Zoe has a fabulously proportioned body and is a really healthy young girl but... do we have a problem with this issue? In America? In this town? In fashion? Yes, and I’ve always sort of had these issues with myself. I don’t want to sound neurotic, but I’ve always had a distorted image of myself.

Ah c’mon… you look fabulous. My sister Patricia said that her first memories of me as a teenager were me squeezing my thighs and going, “look at this fat right here!” She thought I was crazy because I was really skinny. But I’ve always had this negative image of myself.

Where do you think that originated? I think it came from my mother. She had gained a lot of weight and got really big for a while. I hated it. I felt sad. It really bothered me that she let this happen. That she had such low self-esteem.

Do you still today have these body image issues? Well, I am getting older. I will turn 50 this year. But I talk openly with Zoe about it, saying it is so neurotic.