I finished high school, moved to Nashville for college, and set out to break into the music business. Every night when I called home with news of my experiences, my mom and dad would encourage me to keep taking those small steps.

We sat together as a family for dinner at night. And my mother had a job. My dad had a job. But there was always a meal on the table at 6:00, you know.

From time to time, I'll look back through the personal journals I've scribbled in throughout my life, the keepers of my raw thoughts and emotions. The words poured forth after my dad died, when I went through a divorce, and after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There are so many what-ifs scribbled on those pages.

So I go to my first book signing, and these two girls came up and gave me a piece of paper: '10 reasons you should date our dad. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He's a lawyer.' He didn't know what was going on. He didn't even know me. They called him, and he came down and asked me out that day. Now I'm dating their dad!

Being an only child, I didn't have any other family but my mom and dad really, since the rest of my family lived quite far away from London.

I wanted my dad to be proud of me, and I fell into acting because there wasn't anything else I could do, and in it I found a discipline that I wanted to keep coming back to, that I love and I learn about every day.

My dad still calls me and makes sure I'm taking my vitamins.

I'm gonna be the best dad that ever lived. I'll have a ranch with a race car track and a golf course.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

My dad had been shortstop when he was in college, and you know, when you're a kid, you want to be just like your dad.