At the risk of being forgotten completely by the media, I went to college and pursued a passion that had nothing to do with acting: mathematics.
When I was little, we had a Golden Book that had all these Disney characters in one portrait on the first page. My dad used to read from it every night. We’d play this game of find Pluto or find Donald Duck. He’d read us stories and do all the voices. Those are great memories.
Girls think that being glamorous means making mistakes and being irresponsible. And that’s just not true.
The camera fails to capture the ‘business’ in show business! We typically will give 10 percent of our salary to the agent, 10 percent to the manager, and 5 percent to the lawyer, plus the publicist gets a flat fee, which needs to be budgeted for.
Teenage girls these days are more and more getting lured into thinking they should dumb themselves down, and that’s going to attract the wrong kind of guy, and it’s serious. It’s serious business.
I didn’t think that college math was for me. I didn’t think I’d be able to hack it. And that perception of math not being for girls, not being for girls who see themselves as socially well adjusted has got to change.
By the end of an intense four years at UCLA, I had co-authored a new math proof, which the media, in fact, loved. As it turned out, math itself blazed my entry back into the spotlight and consequently into wonderful acting jobs like ‘The West Wing’ and others. You just never know, do you?
A reciprocal of a fraction is found by flipping it upside down. If you want the reciprocal of a mixed number or a whole number, just convert it to an improper fraction, and then flip it!
There are stereotypes that have been out there for a long time that tell girls that their main asset, the main thing that they are valued for, is their appearance and also that it’s to the exclusion of anything else.
My husband is a composer, so he plays piano all the time and I sit there and clap telling my unborn child, ‘Hear me clap, hear the music.’ I know music, in general, is supposed to be good for babies to hear.
Look at Jessica Simpson. She’s famous for being dumb. I guess it started with Marylyn Monroe, and she actually wasn’t that dumb, but that’s how she was perceived – and that’s what got popular.
Let’s face it; by and large math is not easy, but that’s what makes it so rewarding when you conquer a problem, and reach new heights of understanding.
There’s nothing unclassy about being naked, if it’s appropriate.
I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it’s too late by college.
It’s such a diversion to be constantly thinking of better ways I can teach people math that my hunger is for that really, for new ways of translating the beauty of it.
I’ve been eating tons of organic foods, staying away from processed sugars, white flours, and anything artificial. It’s the same as my normal regime, but I’m being even stricter, because everything I put into my body is literally building this precious baby inside me.
I want to help middle-school girls stay interested in math and be good at it, and see it as friendly and accessible and not this scary thing. Everyone else in society tells them it’s not for them. It’s for nerdy white guys with pocket protectors.
I recognize that I have a unique position to be a role model to young girls because I am doing something that they consider glamorous, which is acting, and yet I took a time to really get my education and study mathematics, and I think math is the cat’s meow.
I never had little brothers, so I was totally not used to hearing a lot of cussing at a young age! I learned what ‘pull my finger’ meant the hard way.
I love teaching online at my website and soon I’ll be writing a math book. I love to teach math. I just don’t have time for a full-time teaching gig. Acting is way too time-consuming.
It delights me that I don’t fit the stereotype of an actress.