Acclaimed actress Debi Mazar is known for playing strong, sharp-tongued women - most recently in her hit TV Land show, “Younger.” In this episode, Debi holds nothing back, revealing how she beat insomnia, and her secrets to finally getting a good night’s sleep. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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| I basically, for me, like, I would use hot baths, you know, a glass of Chianti. | |
| Sometimes I recommend to my girlfriends, like, I'm not sleeping. | |
| I'm like, well, are you having sex? | |
| Like, having sex? | |
| You know, like there's so many great ways to get exhausted. | |
| Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Oz I'm Dr. Oz and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast. | |
| Dr. Oz Podcast. | |
| She's an acclaimed actress known for her roles playing strong, sharp-tongued, witty women, most recently in her hit TV land show, Younger. | |
| Much like the character she embodies on screen, she held nothing back when revealing how she beat insomnia and her secrets to finally getting a good night's sleep. | |
| Welcome, Debbie Mazur. | |
| You work with directors including Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Nora Ephron, Woody Allen. | |
| I mean, you've had a lot of success. | |
| Debbie, you've talked a little bit in the media over the past few years about the exhaustion you felt as a mom in 2002 and the fact that although you were able to get to sleep without any difficulty then, over time, the stress of raising a family and the juggling the demands of your career exacerbated that insomnia. | |
| And that is something that I hear about all the time. | |
| You know, I can't sleep. | |
| I used to be able to sleep great. | |
| I used to be able to sleep like a baby until I had babies. | |
| And no longer is that the case. | |
| Is that a baby in the background? | |
| That's a real baby drinking her bottle. | |
| She's 11 months old. | |
| I thought that was a sound effect from our studio. | |
| I don't get the buttons like you to press. | |
| That's Julia, my other daughter, Evelina. | |
| We have our morning time here in California. | |
| It's only 7.50, so we are having... | |
| They have their milk in bed next to me before we go to school. | |
| Are they breastfeeding? | |
| She was. | |
| She's done now, thank God. | |
| I'm done with that. | |
| That's what I thought you meant when you said they're having their breakfast in bed. | |
| No, we just like, it's cold in the morning, so we all kind of like climb into bed in the morning, you know, and I have coffee and they have milk. | |
| Okay. | |
| Gotta wake up. | |
| So teach us a little bit about what you learned about sleeplessness in motherhood. | |
| Well, you know, as an actor, I've actually had difficulty sleeping because we have schedules that, you know, one minute we're into nights, the next minute you're doing a 17-hour day, the next minute you've got a three-hour day. | |
| And, you know, the schedule switches around so much that I've always had a little bit of insomnia. | |
| Which I had dealt with, you know, with sedatives. | |
| You know, sedatives, boom, out, I get my sleep, I do my job, you know, I recoup, I get back on a schedule. | |
| And so for years I sort of toyed with insomnia. | |
| And then when I had my first daughter, you know, the world became about her. | |
| And I just... | |
| You know, between, like, going to work and then worrying about, oh my God, am I going to get to work? | |
| Can I get up and work out in the morning? | |
| You know, who's going to go do the groceries tomorrow? | |
| Oh my God, is the natty going to show up on time? | |
| I would get into bed and, like, think of 20 million things I had to do the next day. | |
| And between, like, you know, thinking and just, you know... | |
| And working, I couldn't turn off to the point where it became chronic, where I started to become forgetful. | |
| My health started to decline. | |
| I would catch colds really easily because I started functioning on three to four hours a night. | |
| You know, it's just not healthy. | |
| You know, the mother's kind of like, you know, she a lot of times becomes sort of like the CEO of the family. | |
| She's like, you know, laying in bed while the husband's sleeping and the kids are sleeping. | |
| And then I just, you know, for me, I ended up having to go to the doctor and say, like, I don't know what to do because I couldn't get up in the middle of the night if I took a sedative. | |
| You know, there was a study they did, Debbie. | |
| They looked at Volvo workers in Sweden, lest you think this is just an American problem. | |
| And they looked at men versus women and how their health was affected by the work. | |
| And in fact, there was zero difference with men and women, when you look at their health issues, when you only take into account the work itself. | |
| But the reason women actually did worse in the study was because in Sweden, when the men go home, they go bowling too. | |
| They kick back, the stress levels drop dramatically, and they don't perseverate and think about all the subtleties. | |
| But as you point out, for women, they're the family CEO. So they spend a ton of time. | |
| In fact, we've got survey data on this. | |
| 37% of women say they don't sleep enough. | |
| And the main reason they say that's true is because their household chores after the family goes to bed take up a lot of time, so they actually get to bed later. | |
| And then they perseverate over the things they didn't get done in time. | |
| You know, what time is the kid getting picked up? | |
| Well, it's a very natural thing, I think. | |
| You know, I mean, I'm sure this... | |
| And CEO is almost the wrong term because I think of it in more of a spiritual or just in a role-playing way. | |
| As women, you know, we're just built differently, period. | |
| So, you know, for women, it's just natural that they think of these things. | |
| That's sort of like our job, our genetic makeup, I truly believe. | |
| Like, men just don't think about certain things. | |
| It's not in their genetic makeup. | |
| Debbie, it's actually hardwired differently. | |
| They did studies looking at men and how they hear. | |
| They actually aren't bothered nearly as much by a crying baby, where a woman cannot sleep and cannot rest easily when the pitch of a child's cry is played into their ears. | |
| My husband said to me, we have to get the baby out of the bed. | |
| Like, just stick her in the crib and let her cry it out. | |
| And I said, I can't lay here sleeping with the crib like four feet from me when she's screaming and crying. | |
| But, you know, he's able to do that. | |
| Alright, so in any case, so you're not sleeping, your health's deteriorating, you're getting colds, you're getting forgetful. | |
| You go see a doctor, is that what you did? | |
| Well, yeah, and the other part of it is I couldn't even remember my dialogue. | |
| You know, I mean, I have to perform as an actor, so I went to a doctor who, you know, at the time, before I had children, suggested a sedative, and then since I had children, I need to wake up. | |
| So, you know, what I want people to know is that there are alternatives to sedatives. | |
| There are ways to train yourself to go back to sleep. | |
| One, you can do on your own naturally, and if it's not working out, you can see your doctor because it's a very, very common problem. | |
| And there's a solution. | |
| And for me, there was a drug called Rosarum that was non-addictive, non-narcotic. | |
| And for me, that was a great choice because it sort of retrained my body how to sleep. | |
| And I wasn't even aware that there was something out there that could teach me how to do this or to help me. | |
| You know, the melatonins and, like, you know, comms fortes were not working for me. | |
| Did it ever worry you that you're taking pills frequently, or were you able to stop taking it once you got some of the sleep hygiene worked out? | |
| Oh, yeah, no. | |
| For me, it was a program, and I took it just for a couple weeks, and it was done. | |
| And for me, it wasn't a big event in terms of, like, oh, wow, like, you know. | |
| All of a sudden, you're knocked out. | |
| It was sort of this gradual, easy thing that my body kind of learned how to adjust itself again. | |
| And I found it very helpful. | |
| I mean, that was a choice for me that I made. | |
| I'm not a person who even likes to take aspirin, so I wasn't even running to the doctor for help. | |
| But I really didn't know what to do anymore because I felt like the world was on top of my shoulders at a certain point when I wasn't sleeping and I just didn't know what to do. | |
| I couldn't just have a glass of wine and go to sleep. | |
| I really needed to figure out what to do. | |
| I was exercising. | |
| I wasn't having too much caffeine. | |
| I was doing all the right things that people do when they want to try to sleep. | |
| And that's another thing for women. | |
| It's like, you know, cut back the TV in your bedroom or cut back the caffeine. | |
| Try to relax and make the room a more relaxing environment. | |
| There's a few things that you can do before you get to the doctor. | |
| Walk me through this in a little more detail. | |
| Because the average person, when they are frustrated by not being able to sleep, they've actually tried the low-lying food things, right? | |
| They cut the caffeine out. | |
| They eat a little earlier in the day so that's not bothering them when they go to bed. | |
| They don't work out just before going to bed. | |
| But they do the simple things. | |
| So you've done all that. | |
| What were the other sort of sleep hygiene things you did that allowed you to get back into a program that worked? | |
| Hygiene-wise, for me, I mean, it's an odd word. | |
| Basically, for me, I would use hot baths, you know, a glass of Chianti. | |
| Sometimes I recommend to my girlfriends, they're like, I'm not sleeping. | |
| I'm like, well, are you having sex? | |
| Like, have sex. | |
| You know, like, there's so many great ways to get exhausted that people sort of, especially once they become parents, you know, they kind of, like, it becomes put on the side. | |
| And, you know, I've never seen anybody tired from a good night of sex or look bad from a good night of sex. | |
| So I highly recommend, you know, that also. | |
| You know, I just think that it's... | |
| You know, in marriages, you have to, like, you know, keep them fabulous and fresh, especially when you have kids, and, you know, that's a great way to get tired. | |
| Now, you have the crib in the bedroom with you? | |
| The craving of what? | |
| The crib, you said, is in the bedroom with you. | |
| Unfortunately, I have the crib in the room, which I didn't with my first daughter. | |
| But my second daughter, we don't have a place to put the crib without waking up my older daughter. | |
| Doesn't that interfere with your sex life? | |
| No. | |
| It actually hasn't. | |
| You know, she goes to sleep and she doesn't wake up. | |
| It can, I'm sure, but then we just go in the bathroom. | |
| You know, you gotta do what you gotta do. | |
| We gotta find out what kind of mattress they bought. | |
| A quiet one. | |
| A quiet one. | |
| A quiet one, yeah. | |
| We have a mattress that actually, there's a company that makes them here in California and no noise. | |
| Four out of five couples say their mattress is too noisy while they're having sex. | |
| I made that up. | |
| I highly recommend the headboard not be attached to the bed. | |
| You know, that's it. | |
| I think that's our problem. | |
| That's the problem. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, there's all kinds of tricks, but, you know, that's something that I just think that people have to really try to remember. | |
| Like, do what you can. | |
| There's a lot of communication. | |
| Turn your BlackBerry off. | |
| Keep the pager out of the room. | |
| Get your telephone out of the room. | |
| Turn the phone off. | |
| Stop talking to people. | |
| Stop talking in general. | |
| You know, I find when I speak to my friends that they don't make, a lot of times, their room, like, you know, a place that's, like... | |
| A holy sanctuary, so to speak. | |
| You have to place certain habits as priorities and really allow yourself the time to decompress. | |
| You know, and I think in this world, there's so much communication today, you know, that it's really important that people take the time just to talk, you know, to each other and, you know, and turn the world off a little bit because, you know, between the Internet and everything, it's like it's constant communication, constant thinking, 24-7, 365, people working all the time, worrying. | |
| And all the worrying is not going to change anything. | |
| So that's why I think a lot of people end up losing sleep. | |
| Do you meditate? | |
| Do I medicate now? | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Meditate. | |
| Meditate. | |
| I mumble. | |
| Do I meditate? | |
| Sorry. | |
| Are you medicated? | |
| Not now. | |
| I am with the coffee. | |
| Do I meditate? | |
| You know, to be honest with you, I have tried to meditate. | |
| I make an attempt to do it, but I don't really feel like I'm successful with it, because while I'm meditating, I'm doing the same thing. | |
| Like, I'm going like... | |
| Shoot, I didn't pay the bill today. | |
| Or, oh God, I got, you know, the plumber's coming at three and I got to get home. | |
| And, oh my God, who's going to pick up the kid? | |
| Like, I'm thinking about all my stuff while I'm going, um... | |
| So, you know, that's my personality type. | |
| I'm a personality where, you know, pretty much also like my husband, I do like five million things a day compared to a lot of my friends. | |
| I'm thinking, why do I need to achieve so much? | |
| But that's just my personality, which is also why I don't sleep, because I'm always constantly thinking of what to do next. | |
| Are you just sitting up awake at night staring at the ceiling saying, shoot, why can't I get to sleep? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Oh, gosh. | |
| I mean, I pretty much have conquered it for the most part. | |
| And, you know, having a second child, dealing with two, and I'm sure you know dealing with four, you know, it's a big adjustment, the second one, because it changes everything. | |
| And I'm pretty much exhausted. | |
| And there's really nothing worse than being exhausted and not being able to sleep. | |
| You know, just a little bit of a warning. | |
| With two kids, you can still play man-on-man, but when you go to three, you've got to go to zone defense. | |
| Well, you know, it's interesting you say that, because we just took a trip to Italy. | |
| My husband's from Italy, and we were there for a month. | |
| We came back. | |
| We decided not to have any more children because he can hold one, I can hold one. | |
| And that was fun. | |
| But traveling with more than two is, I don't know how you do it. | |
| You wait until they're older. | |
| All of our kids are at least four years apart from each other. | |
| So by the time, you know, the one's four, then I had the next one. | |
| And they could help, actually, with a baby. | |
| Wow. | |
| My oldest is 21, so, you know, there's no... | |
| Yeah, don't be a coward. | |
| Just wait. | |
| Don't say never. | |
| You can put it off. | |
| You don't have to wait. | |
| You just said you have to wait to travel. | |
| My other one is doing really well. | |
| She was a great traveler. | |
| My second one, she's okay, but I feel like we've been waiting to do things because we're sort of newlyweds. | |
| We're coming up on our fifth anniversary, and we're always waiting to do things because of the kids. | |
| I can't wait anymore. | |
| Part of your life gets put on hold when you have children. | |
| And I've just decided I like traveling, so they're just going to have to come with me. | |
| We have a lot more to talk about, but first let's take a quick break. | |
| Let me talk about Queens for a second. | |
| You know, I rode my bike a couple years ago from Manhattan to Montauk, which is the tip of Long Island. | |
| And in order to do that, you have to ride your bike into Queens. | |
| And so I rode for about 13 miles through Queens, and I did not see any fresh food. | |
| Now there was a junk food restaurant in every corner, but I did not see a place where you could actually buy fresh fruits and vegetables along the path that we took. | |
| Now I'm sure they're there somewhere. | |
| But folks often talk about the health in Queens as not being ideal in part because it's not that readily available for a lot of kids and their parents to buy food that's good for them. | |
| Did you grow up with biases in how you ate that have colored your health? | |
| Well, to be honest with you, my mother, she was a hippie. | |
| And growing up in Queens, my mother managed to find fresh food, as did my grandmother. | |
| I mean, I don't know what part of Queens you drove through, but parts of Queens are really... | |
| They don't have a lot of fresh food, but you can go into a supermarket and find what you need to find and cook it up. | |
| Being resourceful is actually easy when it comes to cooking if you just give it a little bit of thought and some time. | |
| You know, I'm so thankful that my mother and my grandmother were both wonderful cooks because it set a path for my health, for sure. | |
| My children, I try to do the same with them, although I let them have a little bit of sugar. | |
| My parents didn't give me any sugar. | |
| The minute I turned around, I was down in Coca-Cola behind their back. | |
| I'm sure. | |
| How'd you go from that to becoming a beautician in Manhattan? | |
| You know, I was very good. | |
| Come the 80s, I had left Queens early, gone to Brooklyn, and found that I was very good around 15 or 16 years old at doing makeup. | |
| I was self-creating my own face, doing my friends, which turned into doing photo shoots for a little paper called the Soho News in the early 80s. | |
| At the time, punk rock was coming out. | |
| Hip-hop was just starting. | |
| House music was just starting. | |
| Afrika Bambaataa to Debbie Harry. | |
| Everybody was, you know, it was open for everybody to be together and perform and, you know, kind of make themselves into a personality. | |
| And at that time, I was going into the city working... | |
| At a club called the Mud Club for some extra change and creating a look, and people started asking me, like, hey, do you think you could do makeup on this photo shoot that we're doing? | |
| And it would be for, like, the Talking Heads or, you know, some group, Run DMC, you know. | |
| All different people were calling me up, you know, Madonna, just to start giving them a look and, you know, the word spread. | |
| And at 16, I had, like, a spread in Vogue. | |
| MTV had started, and I started doing videos. | |
| So then I discovered the theater. | |
| Through doing makeup, I met a fabulous queen who said, girl, you gotta come help me out. | |
| Debbie, before you get into the theater, when you were doing makeup, did you ever have discussions about what it takes to look good besides putting stuff on your face? | |
| All the different issues that affect how your hair looks, the sheen, the glow of your skin. | |
| Stuff that actually gets back to fundamental issues of how you take care of yourself. | |
| Well, you know, it depended who I was dealing with. | |
| I mean, if I was dealing with older celebrities, they didn't want to hear from a 16-year-old on what my thoughts were on health care. | |
| You know, I would sound like a pedantic, I'm sure. | |
| But, you know, with the younger models who were, you know, emaciated and chain-smoking, you know, I did have a few things to say to help them only because my parents had, you know... | |
| And she has such a strong opinion about, you know, consumption, alcohol, what have you. | |
| And I've never been a pre-T person. | |
| I mean, I've always been more a person who would help people to try to take care of the exterior. | |
| Like, drink your water. | |
| But what did I know at 16? | |
| I would be more like, you know, use your moisturizer. | |
| Which, you know, does help, actually. | |
| Like, I always encourage people to, like, cream it up, you know, the women especially. | |
| But really, at that age, I didn't have... | |
| I knew the basics because of my parents, but I wasn't about to preach because, A, I was, like, you know, 16, chain-smoking, you know, just starting to party. | |
| So that wasn't high on the top of the list. | |
| It was more like, let me just cover up those pimples with this fabulous new foundation I have here. | |
| Do you still smoke? | |
| Do I smoke? | |
| I have one occasionally here and there. | |
| I quit when I had my children, and then when I married an Italian, it was very difficult to have him put them down. | |
| Now, I don't smoke anymore, but I'll have one occasionally with a glass of wine when I'm feeling social, but I'm able to do that. | |
| But as a regular habit, no, I got rid of that before I had children. | |
| Alright, so for all of our listeners out there, how does Debbie Major take care of her skin? | |
| What are the little tricks that you've picked up over the last two decades of actually not only doing makeup for others but obviously your own that keeps your skin looking the way it does? | |
| Well, first of all, a lot of it's genetic, but I drink a ton of water. | |
| I take my vitamins. | |
| I exercise regularly. | |
| I almost rarely ever eat fried food, only because it doesn't agree with me, because it's delicious. | |
| But I try to eat tons of fresh greens. | |
| It's not always organic, but I eat salad and fresh greens every day. | |
| And for me... | |
| I attribute my skin, my good looks to a lot of, you know, a balanced diet. | |
| You know, I have a little red wine, I have a little bit of cheese, milk, meat, fish. | |
| And my body does very well with it. | |
| My body doesn't like, like pork breaks me out. | |
| Chocolate breaks me out, but I still eat a little bit of dark chocolate because it makes me feel good. | |
| How about specific things with the skin? | |
| For example, I'll ask you right up front, do you exfoliate? | |
| Do I exfoliate? | |
| Yeah, like once a week. | |
| I use a natural... | |
| Dr. Hauschka makes a wonderful line, a very gentle scrub that I like. | |
| I don't believe when you exfoliate to rough your skin up. | |
| Your skin is a living area, and it's good to exfoliate, but very, very gently. | |
| I exfoliate. | |
| I moisturize. | |
| I put greasy creams on it a little bit in the morning. | |
| I use sometimes a greasier cream at night. | |
| I'm a person who changes products a lot, and I found that this is some wonderful things on the market to keep your face hydrated. | |
| There's vitamin C serums that really perk the skin up, energize it. | |
| In terms of... | |
| You know, injectables, I think that they're a little scary. | |
| I know a lot of people are turning to that now, and I think for women over 40, it's a choice. | |
| I personally don't love the look of all that stuff. | |
| But, you know, at this point, I'm pretty much keeping it natural. | |
| Just good nutrition and, you know, getting as much sleep as possible. | |
| That's last more to come after the break. - We've been talking about things ranging from sleepless moms to skincare, But let me ask you, you work with some of the biggest female stars in the business, with Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Madonna, and others. | |
| You come into contact with a lot of folks in film and television. | |
| What percentage of people do you think, the ones you work with, have had an injectable or quote-unquote work done? | |
| Is that more than 50%, more than 25%, roughly? | |
| When it comes to women over the age of 35, I'd say 97%. | |
| Is that right? | |
| 97%? | |
| I think women are women, and a lot of women, especially if they can afford it, they try things. | |
| A lot of women don't have such a natural aesthetic, and they... | |
| Go overboard. | |
| And it's obvious when you turn the TV on and you see the face is not moving and it's all puffed out and it's not one line. | |
| People have forgotten to appreciate their history. | |
| And our elders, you know, I think when you walk through Beverly Hills, you don't see grandma anymore unless you look at some woman's hands. | |
| You may see her, but she's got on some juicy couture sweatsuit. | |
| It's really creepy. | |
| I think it was in Vogue magazine. | |
| There was a picture on one page of a very rich hotelier's wife, and then on the next page was Jane Goodall. | |
| And you looked at Jane's face and you saw, you know, an incredible history. | |
| You saw lines. | |
| You saw gray hair that was braided. | |
| And then she looked hip and athletic, like, you know, running through Africa. | |
| And then you saw this other one, like some posh hotel with all injectables, teased hair, pulled back like she went through a wind machine. | |
| And I just thought to myself... | |
| Wow, there is an in-between somewhere. | |
| But for the most part, most women in Hollywood, and I can speak for myself as well, like, you've got to keep it together. | |
| You know, the competition's stiff out there, so if it means, you know, running to the doctor, getting rid of a brown spot off of your face... | |
| Thank God now there's a lot of gentle procedures with lasers where there's very little downtime. | |
| But I find that because of the environment, women are taking care of their skin a lot more because of sun damage, possible cancers. | |
| I think environmentally people are getting weird types of rosacea and eczema, which could be due to caffeine intake or it could be due to an upset in the system. | |
| But I think a lot of it has to do with the air we breathe, the harshness of the wind and sun. | |
| And it's very, very important for women to wake up. | |
| You have to take care of your skin more than ever now. | |
| I mean, I love the sun, but when I'm in the sun, I'm taking care of it. | |
| Now, you grew up in a career that involved dancing and a lot of physical activity. | |
| Do you still work out a lot? | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| Yeah, I've always been athletic. | |
| I... As a kid, I was an athletic kid. | |
| I was always on the track. | |
| I was the fastest runner in my school. | |
| And now I don't jog anymore. | |
| It got hard on my joints. | |
| But I do this thing called the elliptical. | |
| Yep. | |
| And I have a life cycle. | |
| I do Pilates three times a week, which I've been doing for years. | |
| Yoga for me, I love the whole concept of calming down, and I always felt great when I did it. | |
| But I would get injuries because it would open my joints up too much where I was able to loosen my muscles in a weird way, which resulted in injuries. | |
| So for me, because I was so limber, yoga wasn't a great thing for me. | |
| You've sort of transitioned from film to television. | |
| How does that affect your workouts, your personal life? | |
| I mean, how do you compare those two? | |
| Between film and TV? Well, you know, for me, they're interchangeable. | |
| I mean, at the end of the day, I'm playing just a different person. | |
| I have a schedule, and I show up on a set wherever it is I'm going. | |
| I mean, Entourage, unlike other TV shows, is shot single camera, even though it's only half an hour. | |
| So it's very much like movie work. | |
| You know, hurry up and wait, single camera, you know, cover all angles. | |
| And so in terms of how I deal with my schedule and my life, actually the only difference is in TV, I have a lot more... | |
| I probably have a little more freedom with my schedule where it's good for family life. | |
| For me, they're sort of interchangeable. | |
| There's not a huge difference, except in TV, you know, you're guaranteed. | |
| X amount of checks. | |
| So as a mother, I'm able to budget myself. | |
| I know when I might have a holiday, plan vacations for my family. | |
| And for me personally, I like the schedule. | |
| I'm sort of blue-collar mentality in that way that I've always been a person who needed to work. | |
| I need to know what kind of money I'm making. | |
| I need to know when I'm going to be off. | |
| I need to know where my free time is. | |
| And I'm sort of provincial in that way. | |
| I've always been like a worker since I'm a teenager, so TV is a great option for me, which is why I've done a lot of TV. Film, a lot of times, you know, you're on location, you know, you're digging deep into a character where you're a junkie and you're depressed, and you bring that stuff home. | |
| I don't care what any actor says, like, try acting. | |
| It's like, yeah, you try acting, but when you're, like, doing breakdown scenes and junkie scenes, you come home exhausted. | |
| You know, so for me, doing like a light character on TV, it's great. | |
| I mean, especially playing Sean, I have a blast with it because I go in and it's like upbeat. | |
| I get to be fierce or bitchy. | |
| It's just fun. | |
| You know, she's a little bit, she's definitely written one note. | |
| But that's how he wants the character, and as an actor, I don't complain. | |
| I'm like, that's what you want, that's what you'll get. | |
| And then I look for other jobs to fulfill the other, you know, areas of the, you know, the emotions that I'd like to, you know, play with. | |
| Looking for jobs as an actress and a mother, and not a 19-year-old actress, are you finding it pretty competitive, and how do you deal with that kind of stress? | |
| I'll tell you, honestly, I don't deal with it very well. | |
| I don't come home and cry, woe is me. | |
| What I do is I say, okay, I'm 42 years old. | |
| I used to work between 1990 and 2000. In that decade, there was some survey that I was one of the, you know, I worked more than actresses in the whole country. | |
| There were like 10 people who worked the most. | |
| I was one of them. | |
| That has slowed down, like, came to a screeching halt when I had my kids because I gained a lot of weight with my pregnancies. | |
| That's what my body did. | |
| And people don't want to hire, like, you know, a fat actress. | |
| I was astounded. | |
| I thought I would be playing characters from the Midwest all of a sudden. | |
| I looked like I came out of the Midwest, and I just felt like I looked so normal. | |
| I didn't look like a fierce New Yorker. | |
| But it didn't work that way. | |
| I don't deal with it well because it makes me angry that the business is so focused on youth and popularity contests. | |
| But the truth of the matter is, I think it's always been that way. | |
| When you think about... | |
| The characters from the 40s. | |
| I mean, those women were actually younger than they looked, a lot of them. | |
| They looked like they were 40, but they were really 20. So now everything has changed, and what I do is I go, okay, how can I be proactive and, like, further myself? | |
| Let me get creative and figure out what my next career is going to be or my next move. | |
| So right now I'm trying to think, okay, can I write? | |
| Can I, you know, make jewelry? | |
| Can I do a makeup line? | |
| Like, I'm just trying to get proactive and think about what will keep me happy so that I'm not relying on the system anymore. | |
| And being complacent in my creativity to further take care of my family. | |
| So, in Hollywood, I just, now I'm just trying to create my own things or join up with people who are, I mean, it is an open road for everybody. | |
| It's a very exciting time now, like, you know, through the internet. | |
| Like, you can be very creative and come up with great ideas. | |
| Debbie, you're a role model for a lot of folks, both because you've been busy, but also because you're optimistic. | |
| And thank you for all you share with us on topics ranging from how we sleep to taking care of our skin and how we should live our lives. |