In your first memoir, A Paper Life, you described a neglected childhood in which you dabbled with drink and drugs after the divorce of your parents [film star Ryan O'Neal and actress Joanna Moore]. You've said that the experience of writing it was "not remotely healing", but you've just written a follow-up, Found. Was it more cathartic this time?

I think so. I was just in a better place. Any time anyone dredges up all that trauma, all those memories, it's difficult to cope unless you have a strong grounding and you're well. [With A Paper Life] I wasn't as strong as I needed to be. At the same time, it was a bestseller and it enabled me to release a lot of things I'd been carrying since childhood. But writing Found has been more cathartic. I think the fact that it has been helping other people [O'Neal writes frankly about her struggle with drug addiction] has helped. It's less of a titillating read.

Found is about your reconciliation with your father. Has he read the book?

He didn't like it, he wasn't a fan of it. We're not actually getting along at the moment. Some people don't change, that's the lesson I've learned through this. I choose to be around people who see me as the person I've become, and that's not the way he sees me. I don't think he sees me in a positive light. He has a lot of anger. I don't think he likes me.

Do you think he feels threatened by you?

It could be any number of things. It could be he's threatened or he's pissed off I'm getting better. He could be jealous, who knows? You just make your choices, and I have a good foundation of friends and family, and if he doesn't see me in a light that is respectful, there's no reason for me to go there. He didn't have the capacity to feel respect for me or his other children. I mean, his other children are in jail.

At one point in the book you decry the Hollywood trend for plastic surgery for women of a certain age...

Here's the way I look at it: a little goes a long way. I'm not saying I would not ever do or have never done anything, but the look women have adopted out here, it seems that the idea is to take back time, and I feel what it does is to add years on to you. People look crazy.

You had a tumultuous marriage to the tennis player John McEnroe and an acrimonious divorce. Did he ever say "You cannot be serious" in a domestic argument?

Yes he did [laughs]. Everything was like that if you didn't agree with him. It was: "Really? You're not going to agree with me? How can you not agree with me?" Definitely the same things he said on court got taken home.

You became the youngest person ever to win an Oscar at the age of 10 [for Paper Moon, in which she starred alongside her father], started smoking pot at 12, dabbled in cocaine from 18 and became addicted to heroin in 1995. Looking back, were you forced to grow up too fast?

Yes, but I don't look at anything as a way of feeling a victim. I was raised in an environment where there was no way for me to be a child. It just wasn't going to happen. I was with adults all the time, I was very mature. I don't know how that could have changed, what with the way things panned out between my mother and father.

Didn't Anjelica Huston [Ryan O'Neal's former girlfriend] say that when you were 12 you were like "a cunning adult"?

For sure. I was far too mature for my own good. I really wanted to be an adult. My parents weren't cut out to be parents, period. At the same time, I did have an incredible life.

Who is the most charismatic person you've ever met?

Richard Burton. I did a film with him and he was the sweetest, funniest and most charismatic man.

And the most disappointing?

Off the top of my head, I'd say Bruce Willis. He was so rude to me I was shocked. Usually people are respectful to me just because I've been around so long, but he wasn't. He seemed to be very taken with himself and his own celebrity. He was such an ass I couldn't believe it. He thinks he's special. He's not a cool guy.

You've been sober now since 2009. Is there ever a morning you wake up and think: I'm no longer an addict?

I feel pretty good today! I don't think you can say "I'm healed. I'm over it" but I'm not waking up wishing I was hungover or doing drugs or something.

You describe heroin as "the only thing that made me feel like I was meant to be alive". What did you mean by that?

If you're sad inside and you don't feel loved or wanted on planet earth, once you take something that calms those feelings, it's like "Oh boy, this is what it feels like to be made to feel good inside."

Where do you keep your Oscar statuette?

Just in the other room on a shelf. It's not glowing or anything.

You're on Twitter. Do you love it or hate it?

For now, I love it. I'm sure I'll get sick of it. I get myself a little annoyed when people say stupid things. Someone last night said: "I really don't like your picture". I said: "This is who I am, and f*** you if you think I'm going to care." Then someone tweeted this morning, saying: "You really shouldn't curse" [laughs].

You re-tweeted something about how watching Anne Hathaway makes you want "to burn a police car". Not a fan?

I saw her on TV the night before last and she did a rap about the paparazzi. She just loses her cool. Every time you think she's demure and cool, she becomes the Glee kid. I shouldn't say that. She's probably got a trillion fans. Isn't she in that new film, One Day? I mean, why not get an English actress for that? It makes me so annoyed. It makes no sense to me. Now Kate Winslet, we all love. There's an actress.

What would you like engraved on your tombstone?

Let's think. "She lived her life to the fullest against all the odds", because there were a lot of odds. Actually, no, take out "against all the odds", just put: "She lived her life to the fullest".