As a child, I was very shy. Painfully, excruciatingly shy. I hid a lot in my room. I was so terrified to read out loud in school that I had to have my mother ask my reading teacher not to call on me in class.
I think my mother had a lot of opportunity when she was a kid. She was a model, and she did a lot of things in her life, but she had no real ambition. I think my mother really did want a home and kids and all of that.
I didn't really like my birthday as a kid. My mother used to say, "Sometimes we'd have a birthday party and you would just wander off." But she said it was just my way in the world. It wasn't anything that I was truly interested in.
I've played a mother many times, even in tragic things like, "I Dreamed of Africa," so I know how it is to lose a child cinematically. I have so much compassion on so many fronts, for women who have lost children or tried for years and couldn't have them.