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"Jada Pinkett Smith \u2014 &amp;quot;Everything falls into place&amp;quot; On a fiercely bright Los Angeles morning, Jada Pinkett Smith arrives for a photo shoot obviously exhausted; she&amp;#039;d worked until 2 A.M. shooting her new TNT series HawthorRNe. Wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a naked face, she&amp;#039;s gorgeous and so radiant, despite being dog-tired, that she&amp;#039;s a big presence. (But physically teensy: &amp;quot;I have to eat more than I&amp;#039;m comfortable with just to stay visible!&amp;quot; she says, laughing). Pinkett Smith excuses herself and disappears into a hair-and-makeup room. Less than half an hour later, she emerges, lit with energy. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t want my sleep deprivation to jump on anybody else,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;So I took a moment to close my eyes, touch the center, rest, and be still. And I got rejuvenated! When I&amp;#039;m tired, or there&amp;#039;s chaos around me, I go to the center. Sometimes I do a little hum. It&amp;#039;s a comfort, like being in the rocking chair of the soul. It keeps me sane and connected.&amp;quot; Watch this behind the scenes video from the cover shoot! Next: Find out what Jada stopped obsessing over when she reached her 30s.  In HawthoRNe, Pinkett Smith stars as a hospital head nurse who&amp;#039;s as compassionate as she is commanding. Those adjectives apply equally well to the actress; so do &amp;quot;sane&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;connected.&amp;quot; A desire to stay that way inspired Pinkett Smith&amp;#039;s return to television 16 years after she glided from the hit show A Different World into movies (more than 20, including Ali and the Matrix franchise). Having a regular, if grueling, schedule at least part of the year lets her focus on family \u2014 her husband of nearly 12 years, the Oscar-nominated actor Will Smith; their kids Jaden, 11, and Willow, 8; and Trey, 16, her &amp;quot;bonus son&amp;quot; from Will&amp;#039;s first marriage. That doesn&amp;#039;t mean she&amp;#039;s giving up acting in movies, or being a producer (of HawthoRNe and The Secret Life of Bees), writer-director (The Human Contract, out on DVD), or philanthropist (the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation has given more than $1 million to educational and religious charities). But she has back-burnered her heavy metal band, Wicked Wisdom; touring&amp;#039;s too hard now that Jaden and Willow have film careers of their own (most notably in The Pursuit of Happyness and KitKittredge: An American Girl, respectively). &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a woman who does a lot of things, but I&amp;#039;ll put it all aside to be present with my family,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Once you know what your priorities are, it&amp;#039;s all so much easier. Everything falls into place.&amp;quot; The best thing about being in my 30s: Really being able to embrace my womanliness, and understanding that compassion is where the power lies. Because of my background, I had to be tough and take on a lot of masculine energy for protection. When I got into my 30s, I started to become more receptive. I think it had a lot to do with becoming a wife and mother. I realized, Whoa, wait a minute, I&amp;#039;m a girl \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t have to fight like that!  I have more comfort in my skin and in the world than I did in my 20s. At that age, you&amp;#039;re looking for the dude to take care of you, or your mom. In your 30s, you start to connect with your own internal power. Once I decided to take care of myself, then everything else that was supposed to fall in place did. I&amp;#039;ve surprised myself by....becoming a lot more mellow. I&amp;#039;m still a firecracker; I don&amp;#039;t think that will ever change. But I have a lot more inner peace, and I&amp;#039;m a lot more patient. I&amp;#039;ve learned to shut up \u2014 to know when something is worth a debate and when it&amp;#039;s not. Lack of confidence is what makes you want to change somebody else&amp;#039;s mind. When you know you&amp;#039;re OK, you don&amp;#039;t need to convince anyone else in order to empower yourself.  I&amp;#039;ve stopped obsessing about...my body. I was gym-crazy! My stomach had to be hard, my arms had to be cut. I still work out, but now I tell Will, &amp;quot;I like that my body&amp;#039;s getting softer.&amp;quot; It goes with the internal changes.  How my faith has changed: I&amp;#039;ve always been connected; I&amp;#039;m just focused on that connection more. I don&amp;#039;t think I did any prayer in my 20s, to be honest, whereas now it&amp;#039;s part of my daily routine. It&amp;#039;s an absolute must. My top priority 10 years ago: Me! In my 20s I couldn&amp;#039;t see anything besides what I wanted. Next: Jada&amp;#039;s ideal family day includes sweet treats! My top priority now: Family is number one. I figure out how I can give them what they need, and in turn be given the time to do what I want. For instance, when I was considering the TV show, I sat my kids down and said, &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a project that Mommy wants to do. It&amp;#039;s going to be three months, and there might be days that I&amp;#039;m not going to be here when you wake up or when you go to bed. But then I might have two days off, and you can have Mommy all to yourself.&amp;quot; And their response was, &amp;quot;Oh, yeah, that&amp;#039;s cool, Ma!&amp;quot; Willow said, &amp;quot;When you come home late, will you just come in my bedroom and give me a kiss?&amp;quot; The whole family is spending the summer in China, where Jaden&amp;#039;s shooting a remake of The Karate Kid. I was going to be in the film with him, but I decided that when he&amp;#039;s working, he needs Mommy \u2014 just Mommy, who gives the apples with the peanut butter.  My unbreakable mom rule: Respect. My kids are extremely respectful. You might not have to go to bed at a certain time, but do not talk crooked to anybody! Always treat people the way you want to be treated. My guilty pleasure: Pizza and french fries! I call it happy food.  The ideal family day: I love just being at home. We&amp;#039;ll go outside on the trampoline or the swing, take a nature walk, bake \u2014 7-Up cake, red velvet cake, chocolate chip cookies. I love to bake \u2014 that&amp;#039;s the only thing I do. I don&amp;#039;t cook at all. I can&amp;#039;t. My mother didn&amp;#039;t cook; my grandmother couldn&amp;#039;t cook a lick!  The ideal day with pals: I&amp;#039;ve started putting Sundays aside for my friends. That&amp;#039;s the weakest area of my life \u2014 friendships; between family and work, I don&amp;#039;t have a lot of time. But Sundays I get up at 7 A.M. and go on hikes with my girlfriends. Last week we went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine together after the hike. That was fun. And I took my husband out on a date that night, after the day with my friends.  My husband and I always make time for: Sex! Always. No matter how busy we are. And if I told you the places! You would not even believe! It&amp;#039;s crazy the risks that we take. But that&amp;#039;s what keeps it so much fun. I never thought that I&amp;#039;d be married to anybody, and I surely never thought I&amp;#039;d be married to anybody as long as I&amp;#039;ve been married to him. And I plan on being married to him for the rest of my life. It&amp;#039;s been eye-opening how much the connection between my husband and me has deepened.  Next: Trisha Yearwood on being in her 40s and her appreciation for GH!  Trisha Yearwood \u2014 &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m learning to find joy every day&amp;quot; One of the best things about country singer Trisha Yearwood&amp;#039;s recipe for success? Plenty of butter. It figures abundantly and unapologetically in her best-selling 2008 cookbook, Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen. A collaboration with her mother, Gwen, and her older sister, Beth, the book features family stories that reveal Yearwood&amp;#039;s literary flair; her text is as tasty as the down-home dishes. A sequel is due out next Mother&amp;#039;s Day.  Other key ingredients (besides, of course, three Grammys, nine number one songs, 19 Top Ten singles, and 12 hit albums that together have sold more than 10 million copies) include a hands-on commitment to good works (plenty of check-writing, too, of course, but she relishes swinging a hammer with Habitat for Humanity); a newfound sense of balance between personal and professional pursuits, and a deeply happy home life. In 2005, Yearwood married fellow country music star Garth Brooks, who proposed onstage in front of 7,000 fans. They met in Nashville more than 20 years ago, but didn&amp;#039;t connect as a couple until each had left an unhappy marriage, Trisha for the second time. The couple live in Oklahoma, where Garth settled after retiring from touring to be a full-time dad to daughters Taylor, 17, August, 15, and Allie, 13. Yearwood has stopped touring, too, but she still makes hit albums, most recently 2007&amp;#039;s Heaven, Heartache, and the Power of Love; she&amp;#039;s about to go back into the studio to record an album.  On a recent visit to New York City, Yearwood talked about family, feeling fabulous in her 40s, and her special bond with this magazine. &amp;quot;My mom never subscribed to anything else,&amp;quot; Yearwood told us. &amp;quot;She credits a Good Housekeeping article for the early detection and lifesaving treatment of her cancer. She read about a woman with cancer who had very few symptoms, but her hair was falling out. My mom&amp;#039;s hair was thinning, so that sparked her. She hadn&amp;#039;t been to a doctor in years, and she went for a checkup. It turned out she had Stage III uterine cancer. She&amp;#039;s great now; she&amp;#039;s been healthy for over 10 years.&amp;quot; Next: Trisha&amp;#039;s secret to staying in shape. The best thing about being in my 40s: You become instantly wiser and funnier and sexier. That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;d say at my shows to younger women in the crowd after I turned 40.  I like the balance in my life now. Balance comes when you&amp;#039;re with the person you&amp;#039;re supposed to be with and doing what you&amp;#039;re supposed to be doing. I wouldn&amp;#039;t say I should have been more balanced in my 20s or 30s; it&amp;#039;s because of my early dedication to career that I now have the luxury of focusing on making every soccer game and being a bonus mom. Jada Pinkett Smith gave me that term. We were at an event together and she heard me say that I hate the word &amp;quot;stepmother&amp;quot; because it conjures up Cinderella and all these bad things. She came up to me and said, &amp;quot;Bonus mom. That&amp;#039;s what you are.&amp;quot; I love that. I also sometimes say that I&amp;#039;m the stunt mom.  The best thing about being a &amp;quot;bonus mom&amp;quot;: That the bonus children are great. These girls are smart and funny, and they&amp;#039;ve been really sweet to me. Garth and Sandy [his ex-wife and the girls&amp;#039; mom] have made it easy for me to become a part of the family. Garth gave me good advice: He said just be who you are, and you&amp;#039;ll earn it day by day with the girls. And I believe that I have.  What I&amp;#039;d tell my younger self: I spent a lot of time, especially in my 20s, stressing about my weight. I&amp;#039;m not huge; I&amp;#039;m in an industry where people are tiny, and I&amp;#039;m kind of more representative of real people. But I would love to go back and say to my younger self, &amp;quot;You waste so much time worrying about things that don&amp;#039;t matter. Nobody ever said you&amp;#039;re not going to get a record deal or a Grammy if you don&amp;#039;t lose 20 pounds.&amp;quot; I got to do everything that I&amp;#039;ve ever wanted to do and beyond. So it wasn&amp;#039;t about that for anybody else except for me.  How I stay in shape now: I do Pilates five days a week. It&amp;#039;s really changed my life. I&amp;#039;ve weighed less, but I&amp;#039;m in better shape than I&amp;#039;ve ever been in. I did 125 sit-ups this morning. It doesn&amp;#039;t get any easier. But I feel strong. And I&amp;#039;ve got ankles for the first time ever! My favorite way to start the day: Garth and I really had to adjust to the waking up in the morning thing. I&amp;#039;m kind of laid-back and quiet, easing into the day with a cup of coffee (or two or three) and a book. Garth is Mr. Energy \u2014 instantly awake. He&amp;#039;s like a puppy: &amp;quot;Want to get up? Huh? Want to get up and play?&amp;quot; We have really compromised: He lets me have a cup of coffee, and I don&amp;#039;t make him wait three hours before we leave the house and go do something.  Next: What Trisha does to pick herself up when she&amp;#039;s feeling down. How &amp;quot;Gartha Stewart&amp;quot; contributes to the cookbooks: My husband takes my recipes and mans them up. He likes real hearty things. There&amp;#039;s a recipe in the new book that we made up together; I call it Cowboy Lasagna. He loves lasagna, but he wanted it to have more stuff in it. And he took my country quiche and said, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s put tortellini in it.&amp;quot; It was a really good variation. He&amp;#039;s the one who taught me that the recipe is just a guideline; you can go, &amp;quot;Well, what would I like in this?&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s how new recipes are born.  The ideal family day: We&amp;#039;re more likely to pop popcorn and watch a movie at home than go out. The girls want to go do things with their friends, but they&amp;#039;re also still at an age where they like spending time with us. Garth and I like to hike; the girls will come, but they&amp;#039;d rather be listening to their iPods. There are two gals I&amp;#039;ve especially bonded with in Oklahoma; our kids play soccer together and like each other. So they&amp;#039;ll come over with their husbands and we&amp;#039;ll grill out, and the kids will watch Twilight for the 10,000th time. It&amp;#039;s fun! The perfect romantic getaway: Because Garth and I spent most of our time on the road before we got married, vacation for us is not going anywhere. We have the girls every other day \u2014 so every other night is date night. We watch some movies, but enjoy just getting to hang out. Cooking together is very romantic. We&amp;#039;ve even been in the car, dressed up to go some nice place for dinner and to a movie, and we&amp;#039;ll get out on the highway and go, &amp;quot;Can&amp;#039;t we just go home and make a pizza and play Nintendo?&amp;quot; And we do! How I pick myself up when I&amp;#039;m feeling down: I do something for someone else. I&amp;#039;ve learned that when I&amp;#039;m micro-stressing over something that doesn&amp;#039;t really matter, or feeling sorry for myself, I should get out there and do something that benefits others, like the fund-raising walks for the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation that I&amp;#039;ve done with my sister.  Being an artist, it&amp;#039;s really easy to be self-centered, because your career is all about you. So it&amp;#039;s been a real challenge for me to learn how to make it not just be about me. I think falling in love with a man who mattered more to me than me was big. A man with children \u2014 that definitely forced me to take the focus off me. My beauty regimen: I&amp;#039;m a soap-and-water girl. I use one witch hazel pad, right after I get out of the shower, and then Oil of Olay. That&amp;#039;s it. If you can&amp;#039;t buy it at Walgreens, I don&amp;#039;t use it.  What I&amp;#039;ll be doing when I turn 50: Garth and I have talked about doing one more tour together once the girls are grown and we&amp;#039;re not too old to get off the bus. And I&amp;#039;d love to do a Broadway show, but it&amp;#039;s going to have to be when Garth can move to New York for a year and hang out with me.  What tested my faith: When I lost my dad \u2014 it was the day after my 41st birthday \u2014 that was one of those big moments for me. It&amp;#039;s easy to say that God knows best, and that you trust everything to God \u2014 until something really bad happens to you. And then it&amp;#039;s harder to say, &amp;quot;I trust.&amp;quot; But ultimately I got there, because I need to believe that my father is in heaven, and that he&amp;#039;s watching over me. And so I would say that my faith is probably stronger than ever.  My goal for the 40s and beyond: In midlife you get to a place where you say, &amp;quot;This isn&amp;#039;t going to last forever, so you&amp;#039;re going to have to just learn to find joy every day.&amp;quot; And I&amp;#039;m really focusing on that. I&amp;#039;m glad Garth&amp;#039;s not sitting here \u2014 he&amp;#039;d be saying [in the vocal equivalent of a skeptical raised eyebrow], &amp;quot;Joy every day? Really?&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m trying! Next: Media maven Meredith Vieira on being in her 50s.  Meredith Vieira: &amp;quot;I feel ageless&amp;quot; Halfway through the morning broadcast, Meredith Vieira dashes into the lobby of NBC&amp;#039;s Studio 1A from the crowded Rockefeller Center plaza where she and the rest of the Today show team have been greeting fans. She stops to review her notes on the next guest, a hybrid-car expert, while a producer briefs her about schedule changes. It&amp;#039;s been three years since Today&amp;#039;s cohost landed what she calls the best job in the world, and although she hasn&amp;#039;t entirely come to terms with rising at 2:30 A.M., she thrives on the pace, the variety, and, especially, the company of her colleagues. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re amazing,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They always have your back.&amp;quot; Speeding to their own next segments, her teammmates stop, unbidden, to give testimonials.  &amp;quot;Can I say something about Meredith?&amp;quot; offers news anchor Ann Curry. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s one of the most generous people I know.&amp;quot; Cohost Matt Lauer wants in. &amp;quot;Let me tell you about Meredith,&amp;quot; he volunteers. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s a pain in the ass. Her head is already so big we have to open both doors to get her out of here.&amp;quot; The easy, teasing camaraderie the two share may be partly attributable to Vieira&amp;#039;s having grown up with three brothers, the youngest child of a physician and full-time mom in East Providence, RI.  Family has always come first for Vieira, most publicly in 1991, when she left her prestigious job as a correspondent on 60 Minutes. &amp;quot;Steve Kroft and I started at the same time in 1989,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;The deal was that for the first two years, we&amp;#039;d each do 10 stories, then move up to the regular load of 20 stories a season. Then I got pregnant in 1990, and I said, &amp;#039;There&amp;#039;s no way I&amp;#039;ll get the 20 stories in, because I&amp;#039;ll be taking a six-month maternity leave.&amp;#039; The executive producer, Don Hewitt, made it clear that I would have to get the 20 stories done, and that&amp;#039;s when I left.&amp;quot; During the nine years she was a cohost of The View, she won fans for being unflappable, good-natured, sometimes goofy, and always incisive \u2014 and for sharing the ups and downs of life with her husband of 23 years, writer Richard Cohen, and kids Ben, 20, Gabe, 18, and Lily, 16. (She jokes that she left The View because the children didn&amp;#039;t want her talking about them on the air anymore). She&amp;#039;s spoken candidly about how the family copes with Cohen&amp;#039;s multiple sclerosis, which has affected his vision and mobility. &amp;quot;I think living with a parent who has a disability has given our kids an empathy they might not have had,&amp;quot; she says.  Out on the plaza again, Vieira judges a talent show, poses for photos, hugs guest Jane Krakowski from 30 Rock, and shakes many hands (the team presses so much flesh that a giant Purell dispenser is mounted on the studio door). Before she speeds back inside for her next studio segment, she pats the shoulder of a gangly teenage fan, who sighs to his mom, &amp;quot;Meredith touched me.&amp;quot; Us, too.  Next: The best (and worst) advice Meredith has ever received. The best thing about being in my 50s: Watching my children grow up to be wonderful young adults. Also, I think with each decade, you get a little bit more comfortable in your skin. You don&amp;#039;t sweat the small stuff the way you might have before.  I&amp;#039;ve surprised myself by...starting something new. I&amp;#039;ve realized that even though I&amp;#039;m scared of it, change is a good thing \u2014 no matter how old you are. You can try new things at a time when a lot of people are saying it&amp;#039;s risky at your age.  My husband teases me about...overpreparing at work. I did on The View, too. Richard would say, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t understand what you&amp;#039;re preparing for; you&amp;#039;re doing a piece about organizing a closet!&amp;quot; I prepare for the closet as much as I do when it&amp;#039;s Obama! I&amp;#039;m better than I was, but I still have some issues there.  The challenges of being in my 50s: It&amp;#039;s easy to start feeling bad about yourself when you&amp;#039;re bombarded by images of youth. But I refuse to live that way. What is age, anyhow? I&amp;#039;m not sure that it has much meaning. I sort of feel ageless \u2014 not really a number. I think there&amp;#039;s a child in all of us, and that&amp;#039;s what we all need to remember.  The worst advice I ever got: Someone tried to get me to renew a contract by saying, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ll never get another job in the business because of your age.&amp;quot; And I already knew I had an offer from someone else. That was the nastiest advice I ever got: &amp;quot;Settle, because you won&amp;#039;t find anything else.&amp;quot; Don&amp;#039;t ever settle!  The best advice I ever got: When I was in my 20s and my boss told me that I didn&amp;#039;t have what it took, my dad said, &amp;quot;Do you believe that you have what it takes? Then don&amp;#039;t worry about what other people think.&amp;quot;  The ideal family day: For me, it&amp;#039;s puttering around the house. There are a million little chores, and I enjoy them all. Having everybody there, hanging out and just talking, laughing, playing games like tennis or chess \u2014 simple things. Probably more than anything, I love being home.  My skin-care regimen: It&amp;#039;s one-stop skin-care from head to toe. I alternate between Neutrogena Rainbath and Origins Gloomaway Grapefruit body wash. I get samples of fancy face creams sent to my office all the time, and no matter which one I apply at night, I still look like a 55-year-old woman in the morning! Next: Find out who would play Meredith in a movie! My gym routine: I always exercised in the morning, but now my day starts at 2:30 A.M. and I can barely drag my butt out of bed, much less do leg squats. So I get to the gym when I can and the rest of the time I jog or take long walks with Jasper the dog. How I pick myself up when I&amp;#039;m feeling down: I usually walk or jog. I&amp;#039;m most comfortable in the outdoors. I like solitude; I need to feel small, to just be part of nature. It&amp;#039;s very peaceful. I guess it&amp;#039;s my kind of religion, in a way, or spirituality.  My trick for balancing family and work: I don&amp;#039;t have one. Except maybe: Occasionally you drop a ball; that&amp;#039;s what juggling&amp;#039;s about. And it&amp;#039;s OK. Don&amp;#039;t feel bad about it or beat yourself up.  My husband and I always make time for: Each other, every day. That&amp;#039;s really important. Richard will call me from another part of the house and say, &amp;quot;Can I buy you a drink?&amp;quot; And we&amp;#039;ll sit and have a glass of wine or a cup of coffee.  Our commitment gets deeper and deeper. We&amp;#039;re facing the next stage of our lives, and I&amp;#039;m really looking forward to it. It&amp;#039;s not that I want the kids out of the house, but I&amp;#039;m looking forward to doing things with Richard. We&amp;#039;d love to travel a bit, or just take a walk \u2014 all of those things.  How I&amp;#039;m handling the almost-empty nest: Last year, when we took my older son, Ben, to college in California, I cried the whole flight home. We called a few days later, and he was so happy! I said to Richard, &amp;quot;Why am I crying?&amp;quot; And he said, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s right! You shouldn&amp;#039;t be, because we did our job.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s the roots-and-wings approach to child rearing \u2014 you give them roots, but you&amp;#039;ve also got to give them the wings to go. Richard said, &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s a happy, healthy young adult, and he wants to fly. We should be celebrating.&amp;quot; I think we had a glass of wine. Ever since then, I&amp;#039;ve been generally OK. This fall we&amp;#039;ll be taking Gabe out to college, and as excited as I am for him, there&amp;#039;s a sadness in me. Because even though you&amp;#039;ve done the right thing, it&amp;#039;s bittersweet, always.  How my kids would describe me:  I was feeling bummed out on Mother&amp;#039;s Day because Gabe was leaving, and I went off on a walk. Lily sent me an e-mail: &amp;quot;Just want you to know you&amp;#039;re a great mom.&amp;quot; That was so sweet! I think all my kids would say that. And I can&amp;#039;t ask for anything more. That&amp;#039;s been my goal.  But they&amp;#039;d also say...that I&amp;#039;m a little nuts. And that sometimes I embarrass them because I&amp;#039;m silly. I&amp;#039;ll be walking along and start singing. I kind of do that with the hope of embarrassing them. Who&amp;#039;d play me in the movie of my life: Lucille Ball. She was a comedian, but she could be very serious, too. She&amp;#039;s kind of kooky and fun. And that&amp;#039;s what I try to be. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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