Debi Mazar Quotes

I grew up on food stamps. I come from a very humble background. And I've had many friends that have been destitute - you know, running into trouble - and places like The Midnight Mission have given them hope and have fed them and gotten them back on the right path.

- Debi Mazar

Basically, I start my morning off with a Bustelo coffee made in a mocha pot - the Bialetti. I warm some milk on the side, on my stove, and I add one teaspoon or half a teaspoon of real sugar. I have two of these every morning. Even when I was pregnant.

- Debi Mazar

There's so much importance in honoring your everyday hero. It doesn't take money. It doesn't take connections. What matters is that people get involved. Whether your passion is gun control or food or whatever it may be, everybody needs to stop being so self-absorbed.

- Debi Mazar

I'm naturally a muscular gal with some curves, so eating a Mediterranean diet makes my body happy.

- Debi Mazar

My husband, Gabriele, is a musician, and I love music, so you can bet it's a really important part of our home entertaining repertoire, even if it means Gabriele making a really good playlist for a dinner party.

- Debi Mazar

To me, it's a religious experience to sit down at anyone's table. I feel so invited, like it's a sacred place.

- Debi Mazar

Nobody has money right now. And eating is very important, but it doesn't need to be expensive. And to make - it doesn't need to be fancy, as long as it's fresh and simple. The simpler it is, the more fancy it actually comes out tasting.

- Debi Mazar

Life is just too short to count calories forever!

- Debi Mazar

I always had dreams. I knew I wanted to have money to buy things at the flea market. That's worked out well.

- Debi Mazar

On the morning of Thanksgiving, I would wake up to the home smelling of all good things, wafting upstairs to my room. I would set the table with the fancy silverware and china and hope that my parents and grandmother wouldn't have the annual Thanksgiving fight about Richard Nixon.

- Debi Mazar

Well, you know, I have always had an issue with the whole weight thing with people in general because I happen to love how big women look. I mean, it's all a perspective. It's all an opinion, and I think sort of the Rubenesque, voluptuous body is a lot sexier than the boney bag of bones with fake everything.

- Debi Mazar

As a matter of fact, I've been to Italy many times before I met my husband, which he can't even imagine that I could possibly know anything about Italian food. But, you know, Italian food's really basic, and there's so many different variations on it that what my husband did is he broke it down for me.

- Debi Mazar

We sit down with the kids every single night, not that I want to every night - sometimes I'd rather be out with my husband having a martini at a swanky restaurant - but we sit down with our kids every night at dinner.

- Debi Mazar

I married a Florentine. We bought a house, had a family, and after a decade in our little Hollywood nest, we said, 'Let's go to Tuscany.' Tell God you can't make him laugh, but the next thing I know, my cooking show has become a hit, and they're asking for more seasons, and they want it to be in the States.

- Debi Mazar

I don't like the idea of things being off-limits to kids - like a fancy sitting room where they can't touch anything. I own vintage pottery cups, and I let my girls hold them. It teaches them to treat objects with respect.

- Debi Mazar

I have lots of shoes, but I have to be comfortable. Lately, I've stolen my husband's big, ugly Uggs to wear around the kitchen. I want to have them on, then slide into a fabulous heel later. Truth is, I often forget the heel.

- Debi Mazar

I like acting. I really like acting. The career, it can keep you interested. With 'Entourage,' the characters are living a lifestyle that is kind of troubling. But the challenge is to make Shauna a person.

- Debi Mazar

My mom had me at 16 and took me every place she went. I remember going on peace marches. She tried to take me to Woodstock - it was pouring rain. It was on my birthday, and I was crying so much in the car they turned the car around and dumped me at my grandmother's house... I had a little attitude.

- Debi Mazar

I used to live above Manganaro's, when old Times Square was still peaking, and it still had a lot of diners and theaters on the forty deuce, as they used to call it. It was full of character. And it wasn't Disneyland. Now it's so touristy and full of bright lights, I can't stand it. It's like going to a big mall.

- Debi Mazar

The kitchen is the heart of every home, for the most part. It evokes memories of your family history.

- Debi Mazar

Sitting down at the table is a sacred event. It's the heart of the home. People have ginormous homes or crappy little homes, but the kitchen is where we always end up sitting. It's where the stories happen, the family happens.

- Debi Mazar

We want to teach families how to cook Tuscan wherever you are. How to reuse your leftovers. How to trick the kids into eating whatever you want by putting it into a frittata.

- Debi Mazar

With the breast-feeding, I really love the bonding. Real life is more important to me.

- Debi Mazar

I'm a chocoholic. I need chocolate every day, like one little piece of Droste. I'm not into milk chocolate. But I don't like it when its super bitter. I need a sweet factor in there. I go for the 75 percent - that's good enough for me.

- Debi Mazar

When my mother was raising me, she moved us upstate to the Woodstock area. Our closest neighbor was a mile away. She planted all her own vegetables.

- Debi Mazar

My husband wrote me love letters while I was on location in Canada and pregnant. They turned into being about food, and it turned it into a cookbook. He called it 'The Tuscan Cookbook for the Pregnant Male.' It was kind of genius. When I took it a book agent, he was like, 'Men don't buy cookbooks.'

- Debi Mazar

I'm not in the business to make people aware of me, and publicists are very expensive - they're $3,500 a month! I don't want to spend that kind of money so I can get a stupid article in 'Interview' magazine.

- Debi Mazar

I haven't always had the money rolling in. I'm a character actor; it's not like I'm Gwyneth Paltrow - so I do have hard times still in my life. And that's even more why it's like you know what, I'm not that different from people going through it. I struggle; I look for a better deal at the grocery store.

- Debi Mazar

I live in Italy part time, and they're obsessed with what's happening in LA too. They make fun of Americans, but the world wants to know what's going on in Hollywood.

- Debi Mazar

Some people in LA are addicted. They have to be here. My personal life is stronger than my professional life, in terms of priorities.

- Debi Mazar

I like to watch Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern, because I like them when they travel. I like Ina Garten, 'The Barefoot Contessa.' Giada is really nice, but I get a little bit bored with just staying in the kitchen.

- Debi Mazar

Thanksgiving was always a favorite holiday for me. The preparation was fun! My grandma and I would walk to the butcher on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, order the bird, and buy all the fixings at the market.

- Debi Mazar

I've always been someone who can just move. Some people in L.A. are addicted. They have to be here; they come for pilot season and stay here.

- Debi Mazar

For me, I don't have a publicist. I don't want to talk about my personal life. I don't want to talk about my process. I don't want to be a model and do fashion shoots. It's nice to be an entertainer, but I'm a reluctant celebrity.

- Debi Mazar

We go to Italy every winter, and my husband's mother has a bingo party on Christmas. Every woman brings a dish: lentils, cavolo nero, tons of beans, polenta, every type of cheese, bruschetta, fresh vegetables, and local olive oil and wine.

- Debi Mazar

Being typecast is a great thing for an actor. I was considered one of the New York mob actors.

- Debi Mazar

We go to several farms and look at foraging, and throw backyard parties with friends. We want to let people know they can enjoy a sense of Tuscany anywhere.

- Debi Mazar

I find it beautiful when we're in Italy that everybody sits down at the table together. My mother-in-law is like, 'It doesn't matter what's going on in the house, who is fighting, who is upset, who has appointments, you sit down at that table at one o'clock.'

- Debi Mazar

For holidays, I like doing special cheery touches around the table, like color-coordinating the plates and napkins to fit the theme.

- Debi Mazar

My husband is from Florence. And he has a 15th-century barn that is completely rustic and very 'Green Acres'-like.

- Debi Mazar

My mom did not have money. She was a single mom, on and off in periods between marriages. My husband, however, grew up on a wonderful farm in Tuscany, in Florence, and his family was so entertaining in terms of growing their own food and using the fruit of their land. We have very, very different experiences.

- Debi Mazar

I'm a girl who's curvy, and I'm Latvian, but I don't have hips, and I have a tiny waist.

- Debi Mazar

Cook what's fresh for the day. When you're using fresh fruits, vegetables, and foods, it's easier to keep the weight off. And I eat whatever I want - just not a ton of it.

- Debi Mazar

My husband has the philosophy that if you can work a Nintendo control, you can chop an onion. So, we have our children in the kitchen. We sit down every night for dinner. We're trying to give our kids a sense of what's going into their bodies, and it's also good for family time.

- Debi Mazar

Usually I wear my grandma's old aprons, or others I have collected in my travels. When I was young, I would sit and watch my grandma prepare stuff. She wasn't Italian, but she did really good Italian food.

- Debi Mazar

I used to watch my grandmother make fancy, Julia Child-style beef bourguignon. And growing up in New York City, I was exposed to many cultures. I experimented with Puerto Rican and Jamaican food.

- Debi Mazar

I wanted to come up with a hybrid show of sorts that wasn't your traditional 'dump and stir' type of cooking show.

- Debi Mazar

I don't want to be 45 competing with 20-year-olds, running to go get Botox. I want to be an expressive actor hired for the age that I am, portraying women who are my age: 40. I'm just hoping I can find some of those roles to play. Otherwise, I have to find something else.

- Debi Mazar

We have friends in Italy who have these old stoves, and they turn out the most beautiful food. All you really need is time, the best ingredients, and love.

- Debi Mazar

Food brings back memories. I had a mom that wasn't a good cook, so I would eat my grandma's food. It was amazing because it brings back a time almost in Technicolor. I see her house, I see her stove; I think about what it felt like when I was sick, and it felt like love.

- Debi Mazar

I think my career would probably be in a better place had I been more aggressive. But I don't have it in me. I'm not a competitive person, and I'm also really private.

- Debi Mazar

I think that my interpretation of Italian was a lot more southern than what my husband cooks. You know, I grew up in Queens and in Brooklyn, and we - really, it's more southern. It's Naples and Sicily. It's heavier. It's over-spiced. And like most Americans, I thought spaghetti and meatballs was genius.

- Debi Mazar

I was born and raised in Queens and moved into the city as a young adult. Then I ended up acting and decided to run off to California.

- Debi Mazar

My wrists, which are tattooed with my daughters' names, are always occupied by a watch.

- Debi Mazar

I have a fuller figure and sometimes like to hide my legs. Palazzo pants accentuate my small waist and make me feel a little like Katharine Hepburn.

- Debi Mazar

When you come into our house, you get a flavor for our life, our travels, our kids, our 18-year-old poodle who is like, blind, deaf and incontinent but so happy.

- Debi Mazar

Lunch is formal - that's when my husband and I have our dates. And dinner is formal: we sit down every day with the kids at seven o' clock.

- Debi Mazar

I like to have my hair grow, because I need to have hair for different roles. But I'm a woman, so I'm always cutting my hair off and wishing that I hadn't.

- Debi Mazar

As cool as I want my kids to be, they're just like any other kid. They don't love eggplant unless it is covered in cheese.

- Debi Mazar

I'm teaching my daughters to be ladies by showing them how to dress appropriately when they leave the house, and how to be thoughtful and polite.

- Debi Mazar

I truly have a love-hate thing with the press.

- Debi Mazar

I need savory sauces, stews and pastas. I can't live without pastas. My butt, you can tell I like to eat.

- Debi Mazar

I'd love to give my girls a traditional Thanksgiving with turkey and all that jazz, but we've raised them to love Tuscan food so much that they don't care for it. My favorite is a nice polenta with beef stew and broccoli rabe on the side.

- Debi Mazar

I have this fear of coming across as a Barbie doll who got lucky. Style is a big part of who I am, but it's not who I am. Ya know?

- Debi Mazar

My mother was really young when she had me, so she was a horrible cook, but we lived with my grandmother, who was fantastic. We eventually got our own place, and my mother started learning to cook. But it was also the '70s, so she was very experimental, and, well - thank God we had a dog.

- Debi Mazar

I have a full Tuscan lunch and dinner every day in my home; my husband's a fantastic chef.

- Debi Mazar

A hero is somebody who is selfless, who is generous in spirit, who just tries to give back as much as possible and help people. A hero to me is someone who saves people and who really deeply cares.

- Debi Mazar

In Italy, everybody buys silver for every special occasion. Baptisms, weddings, you get silver.

- Debi Mazar

I've always been a foodie. My grandmother got me hooked on cooking.

- Debi Mazar

I'm never sloppy, and I never wear jeans. I don't work one look in particular, but it's usually retro - I'm a flea-market freak. And detailed - I'm always very done, even at the gym.

- Debi Mazar

I have a very high metabolism, and I have to constantly eat to keep on going.

- Debi Mazar

I've never wanted to be the ingenue. Now that I'm getting into my forties, I think my time as a woman has arrived; I think I might have a new moment in my career. I have that drive left - just for a little while.

- Debi Mazar

I can't live without carbs.

- Debi Mazar

I started doing makeup to make a living. Then I said, You're not supposed to be putting powder on other people. You're supposed to be powdering yourself.

- Debi Mazar

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

- Debi Mazar

Even the pre-schoolers are like, 'I watch you on The Jonas Brothers.' And my own kids. I have been in the greatest movies, even some for kids, and they were never impressed until I did 'Jonas L.A.'

- Debi Mazar

You know, you kind of lose some self-confidence after having kids because you'll never be the way you were. But I feel good.

- Debi Mazar

Doing makeup was a way to create characters, only I got tired of doing it for other people.

- Debi Mazar

For me, its like go ahead and eat. Live your life. I mean, I've just seen so much death, you know, as of late, being in my 40s, of people getting sick or, you know, whatever, that I just feel like, you know what? You never know with life. Eat. Enjoy yourself. Just try to be healthy and, you know, and watch it.

- Debi Mazar