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Bankrate: Who is your hero or role model?
Patricia Heaton: I admire a lot of women in this industry who are moms and producers -- those that can take care of their kids and home and yet raise millions of dollars for creative projects. Generally I'm so in awe of their abilities. It's hard to say one person in particular, but I think generally women are really amazing.
I have five best friends who are terrific and we go away for my birthday every year. I take them away for three to four days someplace. This past year they all came to New York because I was doing a play. One year we went to a spa in Laguna (Calif.), another year was to the Biltmore in Santa Barbara, (Calif.) and another to Palm Desert (Calif.) to a spa. This year is my big 5-0 so we're kind of plotting right now.
Bankrate: Does being with other women empower you?
Patricia Heaton: I think it's more like an alcoholics group together, and we compare war stories. We have our marriages, our children and aging, so we get together and trade stories and tips -- beauty tips, child rearing tips, marriage tips -- things like that.
What's that old saying: A burden shared is halved, or something like that. So when you have other people who are smart and funny and you all go through the same things, it gives you empathy for other people and makes your own situation not as dire. Or just enjoy one another. And that's something I don't do enough of, that I need to do more with my friends and my husband. He's always saying we don't do enough together and it's true. But so much of what our social life is seems to be tied up with business that it's hard to separate them.
Bankrate: What are some of your regrets?
Patricia Heaton: On the one hand, you look at where you are and I'm in such a good place that I think well, would I really change anything if it brought me to this place? But I think there could have been easier paths. I've always known what I wanted to do, but it was hard to commit to that as a means to making a living or studying acting or going after show business when nobody else in the family did it. So I had to define my own way. I would have gone to a college more suited to acting and focused much earlier on acting than I did.
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