People think being Elvira is a lot of fun - and it is - but I was doing a lot more bizarre stuff before then, just being a dancer and a showgirl and traveling around Italy in a band and working for Playboy Club, and later being a model and meeting a million and one people and being kind of a groupie... It's all been really interesting.

I would just think that I would remember modeling for the cover of an album with Tom Waits, who I've always loved.

I think the strangest thing probably is when I went to Japan, and I don't know what the hell I was eating, but there was this one thing that seemed to be in a lot of soups and things there - I always called it pond scum. It looked exactly like the green stuff that floats on top of a pond. I would say, "Oh my God, this has pond scum in it!" I would eat it, to be polite, because we were usually with Japanese people and I didn't want to gag or spit it out or anything. And I still don't know what it was.

Since I always go to work as Elvira, maybe a giant version of a cat. A black cat. I love cats and I think Elvira would look really good sitting on one.

I think, cumulatively, I probably have done more photo sessions than just about everyone. Maybe as much as a supermodel. I know they model all the time, but have they done it for 35 years? I don't think so.

[Vincent Price] did Oscar Wilde on Broadway, and I think he probably did it because he was almost like an Oscar Wilde. He had that brilliant humor.

It certainly changes your life. So that may be a cliché, but I think any woman would say that [day when her baby born] would have been the most special day of their life.

If I retire doing the character, I don't think the character has to retire. There will still be caricatures of Elvira. You know, Dracula still works, and he's dead.