They basically rendezvoused to procreate me, and I never knew them as a couple. Their various custody things felt to me like being a football in someone else’s game. You just think, Why the drama, people?

My mother was one of nine kids, and Grandma was a Pentecostal preacher. Mom went to New York and was basically funding the church with her sin money. One photograph that sums it up: Hugh Hefner’s standing with me and my mother, and her face says how uncomfortable she’s feeling. I have so much compassion for her experience now.

I auditioned for it along with every actress in my age bracket with two legs. But you shake off the dust and keep moving. When you’re in show business, so many people get to control your outcome.

I was on the cover of Time magazine at 14, and I had already been in a film with Laurence Olivier and was having pizza with Andy Warhol. I’m grateful for all that, but it’s weird to be singled out. Once you have the world’s attention, what do you do with it? So you step away for a bit. When you return, they call it a comeback.

I’d be a therapist if I wasn’t an actor. I really enjoy analyzing the way the mind works. Your conscience exists for a reason. People build up defenses so they don’t have to feel things too intensely. But if you peel back the layers, you see, “Oh, it’s because I didn’t apologize to my dad before he died” or whatever. What’s that saying? “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.”

I’m good on my own. I was grateful to go through the pandemic and not be in a relationship, because I think that would have been very challenging to navigate. All that time that many couples were irritated with each other, I got to have space and freedom to figure out: Who am I? —As told to David Hochman