You talk about luck in your book, how much do you think luck plays a part in showbiz? I believe you create your own destiny, good or bad. It’s funny, I just read Dave Grohl’s book, and he said basically the same thing and also Nick Cage said the same recently in an interview.Īnd strangely I learned about Elvis, Elvis believed in the same thing.

I mean, I’m getting all biblical here, but I believe if you put it out there and really believe it if you feel it, you will create it. I believed in dreaming it and then being it. Oh, yeah, 100 percent I believe in creating your own destiny. You mentioned advice from Elvis changed your path in life, also, you were picked out of the audience in Vegas to become a showgirl. My life has been shaped by the music I heard and the movies I saw when I was young.” “Music and film can channel emotions and feelings better than any other forms of art. I ended up living in Hollywood which is, you know, an easy place to meet celebrities.Īt first, I was a groupie, I was climbing in bands’ dressing room windows, so you’re bound to meet ‘em then. I chased after them and sometimes I was there. I wasn’t just walking down the street, usually – sometimes I was. I wanted to be in show business, I wanted to do music, so I put myself in the place where I would meet these people. I mean, when people started comparing my book to Forrest Gump. Do you think there is something about you that made you gravitate towards these stars or them gravitate towards you? You had a knack for meeting famous people, Hendrix, Elvis. Now, you’ve got the whole damn world against you saying bad things about you. No, unfortunately I think it might be worse now with the internet, you know? Then, it was just kids in school.

Were there challenges you had to overcome that you don’t think that you’d have to deal with these days? In your book you mentioned you felt like a misfit when you were younger. On the cusp on the Australian release of her autobiography and her casting in the new Rob Zombie feature adaptation of The Munsters, we sat down with “The Queen of Halloween,” to talk about her autobiography, Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of The Mistress of The Dark, her life, career, and the importance of never, ever giving up. From her pre-fame days as a teenage showgirl in Vegas (where she dated Elvis Presley), her stint as a singer in a rock band in Italy, to eventually finding fame where she least expected it – with her character Elvira in the 1980s – Peterson’s journey has been a long and winding road.

Memoirs of the mistress of the dark