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RG: I met Eddie Murphy when I was in my sophomore year at Sarah Lawrence College. He had just gotten Saturday Night Live. He wasn't the "Eddie Murphy" that the world now knows, at that time. He was an actor that was happy to get a job. It was the same thing with Brad Pitt. When I dated Brad, Brad couldn't get a job. I was paying for all our meals and he was a struggling actor. We talked a lot about acting because were in acting class together, and we loved acting together. When we dated, he literally couldn't pay for dinner. At the time, I had already gotten the role on Head of the Class. It was a different dynamic, where I was the big deal. You know what I mean? I lived it all at a young age, thank God, and I get to have a good perspective on reality and how it can be changed. There was a pivotal moment in your life, when I believe you were studying at Harvard with the intention to become a doctor, before you decided to pivot and pursue acting. In retrospect, was this the right path? RG: I was at Harvard Graduate School and I knew I was going to be a doctor, or so I thought at the time. By the time I got to Harvard, I was really wanting to pursue acting. If you asked me ten years ago, I would have said I should have become a doctor. As a mom, I just came from visiting my son and saying to him, "Get a law degree! Get a law degree!" My mom was raised in the south at a time when, as a woman, she couldn't go in the front door of a movie theater. She could buy clothes at Woolworth, but she couldn't try them on, and she couldn't sit at the counter and eat. I think I grew up with the sense of, what she believed, which is that education is a great equalizing factor in America. I have a parent who, literally, just stopped leaving me medical school applications any time she'd come to visit. Up until recently, I knew there was an application to some medical school lurking somewhere in the house [laughs]. Do you pray? If so, who or what do you pray to? RG: I have a great relationship with God. For me, that has been a very important relationship. He's the only father I've ever known. I would often sit down with God and say, "I don't want to have to go through this." But it's all gotten me to where I am, both as a person and as a mom with these two kids. I grew up Catholic with a sense of the ritual of Catholicism. Certainly, I have some questions about all of that now, and some misgivings. But it is something I still do [observe]. And I always say that my ex-husband [Mike Tyson] taught me, and gave me, a true relationship with God. What do you think you are here on this earth as Robin Givens to learn, and what do you think you are here to teach? RG: I'm the first of two children and I have a type-A personality. I always say I'm a recovering perfectionist. That's something I've had to learn, and there is a kind of humor in the quest for perfection. It's not very interesting, and you can never really achieve it. That's something that life has taught me. The difficulty that I have gone through has really taught me a sense of compassion. Most people in my life know that I am a compassionate, loving person. I've also had learn to relax a little bit, because my brain does start overworking.