Bankrate: Was that the start of your interest in theater?

Graham: I really love it. When we got out of school, dinner theater paid very, very badly down here and I was doing dinner theater, bartending and waitressing. I think dinner theater paid about $50, which is actually why I wound up writing. I just couldn't afford it anymore once we started having children. It was way too expensive to try to go to work.

Bankrate: Opportunities in Miami then were not what they are now.

Graham: There wasn't a lot going on. When I made the choice to stay here, I had just lost my father, I didn't want to leave my mother. I didn't go to school here, I went to the University of South Florida (in Tampa), and I think one of the reasons I got so involved was that they had this really fabulous theater department. They had done USO shows. I did a lot of work with the School for the Deaf. I absolutely fell in love with it.

Bankrate: You were a married freshman, right?

Graham: Yes, we got married and for our honeymoon, we enrolled. My husband was a couple years older and when I got out of high school we went on up to USF. He was an art major with a minor in theater tech.

Bankrate: So the two of you were going to starve together.

Graham: (Laughs) Yeah, and that's pretty much what we did! One art major and one attorney would have been better. Through USF, I got to study with the Marceau School in Paris, I went to the Abbey in Dublin. We had a really great run with it but I just wasn't making any money, even working as an extra. We did the world's worst kung fu movie ever, seriously. I don't want to know the name of it. The star, every time he would do one of his kung fu leaps, he lost his toupee. Every time I see "Soap Dish" with Kevin Kline, I go, oh my God, that's my life!

Bankrate: You probably get asked about the other Heather Graham all the time.

Graham: It's interesting. For one thing, if I had had $600 many years ago, she couldn't have used the name, but I couldn't afford to get my SAG card. It's kind of interesting. She's definitely very pretty. I was interviewed as her once. I was in the middle of the interview when we realized that neither one of us was on the same page. The interviewer had asked something about a martial arts movie, and I thought, oh my God, she's seen that horrible one I was telling you about with the guy who lost his toupee all the time. So we were going back and forth and she said, "You really look quite different in person." I thought, hmm, I didn't think I was that different (laughs). I always wanted to see my name in lights, so there you go -- she got it in lights!