CARMEN: Very, very tight. It makes Joan Rivers look like she has a sagging face.

BILLY: You liked his products?

CARMEN: Clinica Ivo Pitanguy Skincare available at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, a face-lifting formula, eye-lifting serum, neck-lifting formula. This stuff is terrific.

BILLY: How long have you been using it?

CARMEN: About seven days. They must have the same elements of what is in Preparation H; it shrinks and tightens the skin.

BILLY: Carmen, it is always great to talk to you. But are you sick of being asked about Bernie Madoff?

CARMEN: Listen, I am lucky in that I come from the Depression. We learned things like never have a mortgage, own outright and all those rules still work today. I have money in the bank, but I have some money in the mattress in case there’s ever a run on the bank. I have that Depression mentality ingrained in me as I do my Catholicism, although I became a Jew later. Jewish, Episcopalian, Catholic, Buddhist — don’t they all teach the same thing? Be kind to each other. Do the right thing. Who does the right thing when no one is looking? That’s what separates the men from the boys, and the women from the girls.

BILLY: You own your apartment?

CARMEN: I had a guardian angel. I tried to sell my little apartment a while ago, thinking I might get a larger one, but I had no takers. Then when I won my arbitration, I had met Mr. Levy who introduced me to Mr. Madoff and it was considered such a privilege to be given an account with Bernie Madoff. It was February 1994, the day Mr. Levy made a grand play for my affections. He matched my life savings, which I had just recovered, and we opened my account at Bernard L. Madoff. I started to get these amazing returns, 25% one year and 10% in the last couple years. I thought I might try and sell my apartment again.

BILLY: You put it on the market?

CARMEN: No, you see I held back. Something about being from the Depression, I held back from living up to the lifestyle standard of what I considered to be only paper profits.

BILLY: You really weren’t tempted to live larger during the bling years when everyone was upgrading?

CARMEN: I always knew credit cards were a Ponzi scheme when they came along. I got one for identification when I travel but not to buy things I couldn’t afford. Where’s the money going to come from to pay the bill? My lifestyle and my creature comforts and the roof over my head is never any place but in my own hands and my own planning, see?

BILLY: I do. That’s the advice you’d give young people today?

CARMEN: I worked. I have my health insurance through the Screen Actors Guild. I have Medicare and Social Security. I always lived on the money I earned, not on credit or margin. And anything I could save, I gave to Bernie.

BILLY: But you’re OK financially? And you’re still working.

CARMEN: I am OK and I am grateful I am still working. I am middle-class, you see. I may look high-class, but I’m middle-class. I don’t lie to myself about what I have materially or what my expectations are. But, yes, I am blue sometimes, blue because of the betrayal, the horrible betrayal — I spent so much time with Bernie and his wife Ruth … But, oh yes, otherwise I am OK and so very grateful.