Editor’s Note: In honor of her new book, Cloris, legendary actress Cloris Leachman sat down with our managing editor. Here’s the transcript of that encounter.

CLORIS: Hi. Hello.

ANDREW: How are you, Cloris? Are you having a nice day?

CLORIS: Oh, wonderful.

ANDREW: Oh, good.  That’s what I like to hear. So you’ve just published your first book, called Cloris. Tell me: What possessed you to write it?

CLORIS: It was sort of part of a big plan to maybe do a one-woman show, do a book. Just sort of everything.

ANDREW: In another interview you did with regard to the book, you said it’s not a tell-all. So what is it?

CLORIS: Well, as old as I am, there are a lot of stories that aren’t here, but we tried to put the good ones in.

ANDREW: What’s your favorite story that you’re sharing?

CLORIS: Hang on a second, please. [Pause.] That’s my daughter.

ANDREW: Oh?

CLORIS: She’s coming over to cook dinner. She’s the best cook I’ve ever tried in my life, anywhere.

ANDREW: And what is she cooking?

CLORIS: Well, she lived in Sicily for three years and it just … I don’t know, it vaccinated her. She’s a brilliant cook.

ANDREW: Great. Has she read your book?

CLORIS: I don’t think so. None of the kids have read it. They haven’t had a chance.

ANDREW: So what is your favorite story in the book?

CLORIS: Well, there’s a good one about Katharine Hepburn.

ANDREW: Oh, yeah? Can you elaborate?

CLORIS: Well, you have to read it.

ANDREW: So, readers, buy the book! Anyway, Cloris, you wrote the book with your ex-husband, George Englund. Was that difficult?

CLORIS: It was really not difficult at all. He knows all my stories, too, so that helps.

ANDREW: He’s a good reference point for you?

CLORIS: Yes.

ANDREW: You two got divorced in the late ‘70s, right? Was it hard to stay friends?

CLORIS:  No, because I made a decision many years before that I would never get bitter about anything. And that helped a lot. That was a good decision, because it’s so easy to get bitter.

ANDREW: Yes, definitely.

CLORIS: And that was a wonderful thing that happened, and he’s a wonderful man and I adore him and he adores me.

ANDREW: Do you remember when you made that promise not to get bitter, what had spurred that decision?

CLORIS: No, I was little. I was very young.

ANDREW: You must have been a very smart little girl.

CLORIS: Well, I made some big decisions when I was about six.

ANDREW:  And what were they?

CLORIS: This is also in the book. I was riding on a streetcar for the first time when I was seven, by myself, and everybody was white and gray and they were dead or dying or asleep or I don’t know what. Boy, I was shocked, and I thought, “I’m never going to let anything grind me down to be gray like that.” And I never have and I never will.

ANDREW: And that’s how you stay so youthful?

CLORIS: I thought, “If anybody’s smiling when I’m grown-up I’m going to give them a nickel.”

ANDREW: I know that you appeared nude on the cover of Alternative Medicine Digest. Would you do that again?

CLORIS: I thought about doing it. 

ANDREW: Really?

CLORIS: I was 70 when I did it and I thought about doing it when I was 80 and 90, but then I changed my mind.

ANDREW: Why?