Bonnie Hammer

The biggest mistake to me is complacency.

My parents did great and provided well, and gave all their kids personal, moral, ethical values, not a belief that we were entitled to something.

My parents weren't at all in entertainment, but when I look back, something along the line prepared me and opened me up to entertainment.

In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.