You know I've learned a lot from every person I've collaborated with from Madlib to Jean Grae and Hi-Tek to Mos to DJ Quik to even somebody like Jermaine Dupri. I've taken something important away from every experience.

Experience already reduced to a group of impressions is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without.

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

I raised five children. They all have different personalities. All of them have different issues different levels of success. That was a learning experience for me.

I feel that between my experience and my mother's breast cancer is a little bit like someone who lives next door. I know what that person looks like and what their daily habits are.

My Marine experience helped shape who I am now personally and professionally and I am grateful for that on an almost daily basis.

My father respected and admired my mother and was a person who was always standing by my side encouraging me to do more and believed in my capacity. So in that sense my own experience was very good in becoming an empowered woman. From early on I carried that strong message: 'You can do it.' So I never had any doubt that women can do a lot.

There's full consensus in the military that women shouldn't be in person-to-person combat. I don't know if we have enough experience to know whether this is the right approach. But women can be elsewhere. We have mandatory military service in Chile. I pushed for women in all areas.

I think it's really really important to mix it up as an actor to try to get as much kind of varied experience as you can not only for your own personal growth as an actor but for the audience to keep them guessing about what you're going to do.

Yes all my songs come from personal experience and relationships.