There are necessary evils. Money is an important thing in terms of representing freedom in our world. And now I have a daughter to think about. It's really the first time I've thought about the future and what it could be.

I do eat well. I try to love my body. That is what I tell my daughter. I say 'Love every bite of food. Love your body. We're all going to be dead soon.' Actually I don't say that last thing to her.

This June I'll travel once again to the Food and Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen Colorado. For many years my dear friend Julia Child and I have teamed up to teach classes together at the event for the past seven years my daughter Claudine has been my cooking partner on stage.

If my daughter wants to get into this business I would support that decision. She's going to have a hard time not being in it. She loves food and she's around it all the time.

I'm a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn't understand what was going on with every single ingredient I could be qualifying for like the lunch food job at my daughter's school.

They did interviews with my wife and daughter-they were genuinely in fear of me having a heart attack working 20 hours a day eating fast food.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I still had a daughter who I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.

It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve the good thing they've got going and to keep their siblings off their back.