Actually, the books were never a planned career path.
All the work built my fame and certainly made me more money, but the toll it took in my home was not good.
And I was ashamed of myself for feeling like I had to do that in order to look a certain way. I felt misshapen, just not natural anymore. And I think it was a big stimulator of my drug use.
As much as I have lived off my mother and her unbelievably famous body for all these years, I'm also my grandmother's granddaughter.
Because I know I'm an addict, and I know I'm an alcoholic.
Being an actor, you are recognized for being somebody else, whereas these books are distilled from me.
But marriage is not easy. You have to be extremely comfortable with who you are and you have to establish perimeters for yourself.
Getting sober just exploded my life. Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can't do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that's all a direct result of getting sober.
Growing up for me was very normal.
Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older.
I can play rhythm guitar. I know how to hold a guitar and strum it.
I have very short hair. It's the only cute haircut I think I've ever had.
I just finished a biography of Marie Antoinette. I was weeping as I turned the last few pages. It was just a killer.
I love performing and pretending - it's very easy for me.
I talk too much.
I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change.
I think I felt that I was very well known for my figure and needed to keep that up for my work. And I regret all of it. I felt fraudulent and very shameful.
I think my capacity to change has given me tremendous happiness, because who I am today I am completely content to be.
I thought, while they're up and firm, why not shoot them once or twice.
I try to go to the gym three times a week. And I have to watch what I eat. I'm a normal person.
I used to dream of being normal. For me, if Kirk Douglas walked into the house, that was normal.
I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling - and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves.
I work with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. I sit proudly as one of only two recovering addicts on their board.
I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.
I'm the mommy in my house, and I want to be the mommy in my house. My not being in the house leaves a really gaping hole.
I've always put my family first and that's just the way it is.
I've been going through photos of my mother, looking back on her life and trying to put it into context. Very few people age gracefully enough to be photographed through their aging.
I've been happily married to Chris for almost 20 years.
I've been in showbusiness all my life, but as an actress I have never been overly driven.
If I'm honest I don't think the world would miss me if I never acted again.
If you just watch a teenager, you see a lot of uncertainty.
It was during a cosmetic procedure that I first had painkillers.
Kids are going to try drugs and alcohol; that's part of society.
My deal was that they would use a full-length picture of me in my underwear and a full-length picture of me all done up, and they would write about how long it took and how much it cost, because that was the whole point. It was very liberating.
My husband and I have a vacation home in the same place my parents went to all my life, and I'm grateful for that.
My marriage? Up to now everything's okay. But it's a real marriage - imperfect and very difficult. It's all about people evolving somewhat simultaneously through their lives. I think we've emotionally evolved.
My mother and stepfather were married 43 years, so I have watched a long marriage. I feel like I had a very good role model for that. And, you know, it's just a number.
Now all of a sudden I'm so less interested in pretending to be a lot of other people, and much more interested in being me.
People get real comfortable with their features. Nobody gets comfortable with their hair.
So, am I friendly with my daughter and her friends? Yes. Am I their friend? No. Does she shut the door? Yes, and I very much support the shut door.
The more I like me, the less I want to pretend to be other people.
The parameters are such that I don't get offered a lot of work. I'm sure most directors hear my list of don'ts and say forget it.
Well, I could do it for a day, but I wouldn't want to be a teenager again. I really wouldn't.
With short hair you have to get a haircut every two or three weeks. And if you're coloring your hair, you have to color it that often. Every time I did it, I felt fraudulent.
Jamie was asked to make a cameo appearance in the movie Scream 3, but she declined.
Jamie took a year off from her acting career in 1996 to spend quality time with her daughter, Annie.
Jamie started her acting career playing small parts on television sitcoms such as: The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Quincy.
Jamie admits to battling a cocaine addiction. She and her father, Tony Curtis, used to do the drug together. She kicked the habit, though, in 1983.
Jamie Lee is godmother to actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
It was Jamie who originated the idea for the successful sequel Halloween: H20.
Curtis admits to being a fanatic of singing sensation Justin Timberlake.
Because of her great physique, for a number of years, Curtis' nickname in Hollywood was "The Body".
Curtis played the aerobic class instructor in Jermaine Jackson's "(The Closest Thing To) Perfect" music video.
Jamie Lee Curtis has confessed she got hooked on painkillers after undergoing plastic surgery. She has since kicked the habit.
Jamie never used to show her teeth when she smiled, because she thought they were disgusting. The actress has revealed that her teeth were permanently greenish-grey while she was growing up, because her mother, Janet Leigh, took the strong antibiotic tetracycline when she was pregnant, and Jamie learned to cover her less than gleaming gnashers.
Jamie's educational background included Choate Rosemary Hall (private school - graduated in 1976) and the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She promised her mother that she would give college a chance, before pursuing an acting career, so she focused on Social Work for a semester. The first semester proved boring, so she followed her dreams to act.
Jamie is the author of a number of best-selling children's books.
Thanks to her innate talent for screaming (as evidenced in her many horror films), Jamie has been dubbed "The Scream Queen".
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