It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

I compare it to being in a car accident. There's so much adrenaline rushing through you that you remember being in the accident but you don't remember any of the details.

On one level nothing's really changed in my life. I still drive my daughter in the car pool on Monday. But it's impossible not to be aware of this rush of attention it's impossible not to be seduced by it once you've entered into it seduced by being unhappy when the attention wanes.

I get appalled when I see good drivers being left on the sidelines because they haven't come up with the half million to a million to put themselves in a competitive car.

'Blind Curve ' the book I'm working on now sprang from a crazy incident that happened to me last year while on my book tour. I was pulled out of my car for a minor traffic violation - an incident that escalated into my being thrown into cuffs and told I was going to jail. Except in my story the hero doesn't get off as easily as I did.

Being an actress is similar to trying to fit in with the popular kids in high school. You're expected to drive the right car wear the right clothes and say the right things.

A car to pick me up every day a chair with my name on it everybody being very polite... what can you do except sit back and watch it all try to take it all in?

It's sad that women characters have lost so much ground in popular movies. Didn't 'Thelma and Louise' prove that women want to see women doing things on film? Thelma and Louise were in a classic car they were being chased by cops they shot up a truck - and women loved it.

Every job has its downside. For example being in a band the travel part of it - getting picked up from your house in a car going to the airport getting on a plane going from the airplane to a van then going from the van to a hotel.

What's monotonous about being an actor and often makes me want to throw in the towel or drive a car off a bridge is the auditioning - the waiting around.