I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.

I think Michelle Obama is on the right track with her Let's Move campaign to bring down childhood obesity. She and I come from the same state, Illinois, which is number four in the nation for obese children. One out of five Illinois children are considered obese. Not overweight, obese. And two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese.

I was born in Mumbai, but I grew up in England, and then my adulthood has been in the States. I'm an American stuffed with an English person with an Indian person inside. I feel like those things kind of inform me in some way, which I think helps me as an actor.


Planned Parenthood's mission, on paper, is to give women quality and affordable health care and to protect women's rights. In reality, their mission is to increase their abortion numbers and, in turn, increase their revenue.

After working in a prominent position at a Planned Parenthood facility in Central Texas for over eight years, I can say that women deserve better than Planned Parenthood and that their funding should be reallocated to Federally Qualified Health Centers.

My first March for Life was in 2010, three months after I left my job in the abortion industry as clinic director at a Planned Parenthood in Texas. It was intensely emotional, shocking in many ways, especially the outright love I saw in the faces of people who I once considered enemies.

I wrote in my book, 'unPlanned,' about a church that kicked me out when they found out that I worked for Planned Parenthood. I often get questioned about that, whether I still think they made the wrong decision. My answer is a resounding 'Yes.'

If a woman goes to Planned Parenthood for birth control and discovers in the course of her visit that she has high blood pressure, Planned Parenthood can't help her. She has to be referred to a FQHC for treatment.