I would see these people calling me 'fat' and calling me horrible names. And this one page called me 'Miss Piggy,' and they only referred to me as 'Miss Piggy.' I was a 16-year-old girl. I did not know how to deal with that, and I was already insecure about my weight.
I say, 'Yeah, Taylor Swift.' I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she's making all the right moves. She's got a good head on her shoulders. She's surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she's living and standing by that.
My Big Mama is my No. 1 financial role model. Much of my advice stems from what she taught me. She never made more than $13,000 a year, yet she paid off her home before she retired. She saved money from every paycheck. She taught me to be skeptical. It makes me cry to think that I'm a nationally syndicated personal finance columnist for one of the world's best newspapers and my core advice comes from my black grandmother who was a nurse's aide with just a high school education.
My family plays a big part in my role as a dancer and my sister was my first trainer. She's still my role model and inspiration until this day. She was my first trainer, she taught me my first steps.
She's true to herself and she's determined. She has things going against her, but she forges ahead despite all of that. I think that's encouraging. She's got some problems, but she has hope and tries to plow through things. I think that's a good role model.
I love Jessica Chastain. I love her; she's amazing, and she's such a good actress, and she's been nominated for Oscars, and she's just a big role model to me. I love her.
When you think Selena Gomez, you think 'celebrity.' But really, she does so many things for me. She's very caring. Before she goes on stage, she's a goofy girl. She's fun-loving and totally lovable, which I say in the most honest way. She's not even a celebrity to me; she's just a really cool person.
For me, Caitlyn Jenner is such a huge role model. She's really making a difference in our society by just being brave and sharing her story. People say she's not brave and courageous, but to me, she is so brave and courageous.
Apart from anything else, I got to work with Jennifer Lawrence. She’s a lovely girl. I know people often say things like that in interviews, but she really is. While she may be young, she doesn’t feel at all precocious. Instead, she’s smart and funny and terrific at connecting with people. She just blew me away.
I go to auditions even now and people say, 'Oh, she's too pretty,' or 'She doesn't look like a small-town girl or a girl in high school who would get bullied.' But that's the whole point of being an actress - you can look glamorous when you're on the red carpet, and then bring it all down and be raw onscreen.
I think people have a different image of me because, you know, they portray me with the idea that models are stupid and dumb; like, 'She can just be a model because she can just be a model - she's dumb and she can't do anything else.'
Lynda Carter, I think the reason I liked her was because she was so down to earth. Even though she was a big star and she was Miss America, she was very approachable.
People think Paris [Hilton] is a ditzy blond, and I don't want to blow it for her, but she plays it really well. She knows exactly what she's doing. She's actually a pretty smart person. She's very cognizant of what she's doing, and she kind of plays that role, so people think she's some airhead but she's really not.
If she did see, I hoped she' be amazed. Amazed and thankful, because without even asking, she'd received a genuine autograph from a genuine girl from Atlanta. Not just any girl, but a girl who was, frankly, a pretty big deal. A girl who was me.
The parents say, 'Can you talk to my daughter and say that it's OK? That she can have muscles?' They'll say, 'I show her pictures of you so they can know she's good at what she does but still looks like a girl. She wears dresses.' It releases people to be whoever they want to be in the sport.
I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn't me.