Occupation: Actress and singer.
Birthday: May 25; no year, please.
Birthplace: McLemoresville, Tenn.
Current homes: Los Angeles and Tennessee.
Marital Status: I’ve been married to Hal Holbrook for eight years.
Children: Ginna, 23, and Mary Dixie, 22.
Working On: I play Julia Sugarbaker on “Designing Women,” on CBS-TV, and I have a cabaret act and a video, “Dixie Carter’s Unworkout.”
The last good movie I saw: “Howard’s End.”
The book I’ve been recommending lately: Susan Sontag’s “The Volcano Lovers.”
Favorite childhood memory: My mother bringing me fresh-squeezed orange juice when I woke up from my nap.
Personal heroes: My mother and father. My father, at 82, still gives me a feeling of being protected.
People always think I’m: When I was young, Ava Gardner and then, later, Natalie Wood.
Every New Year’s I resolve: Not to give up doing any of the things I really love, whether they’re good for me or not.
I wish I could stop: Deferring to everyone else’s opinion.
If I could do it over, I: Would have sought better professional advice about my career at an early age.
I’d give anything to meet: Frank Sinatra.
The worst advice my mother ever gave me: Make that the worst adivce she didn’t give me. She never told me how much it hurt to have babies.
People who knew me in high school thought I was: Very disciplined and very ambitious.
My most irrational act: When I got on a train 12 years ago with my children and came to California to work all on my own on my singing and acting career. I didn’t know anyone here and didn’t realize that it was almost impossible to do what I was setting out to do.
Behind my back, my friends say: “She’s so disorganized!”
When people first meet me, they think: “She doesn’t have a care in the world.”
Three words that best describe me: Earnest, eager and emotional.
The one-word title of my autobiography: “Trying.”
