Tori Spelling’s three best-selling memoirs read like personal journals. They are intimate and revealing in a manner that most celebrities never grant to their fan base. For that reason, I felt like I already knew Tori Spelling before we spoke. Tori has a strong aptitude for communicating her passions, phobias, and unique personality quirks to her reading audience, so much so that it gave me plenty of ammunition for crafting my questions.

Tori is self-deprecating and down to earth, and her character flaws double as part of her charm. There is nothing rehearsed about Tori Spelling’s persona, or the way she answered my questions, for that matter. There are very few public personalities who allow an air of vulnerability to penetrate their voice during an interview, and as a journalist I appreciate those who are brave enough to reveal that quality. It allows for a genuine exchange. In the case of Tori and I, we were able to connect on the shared chaos of juggling a career and motherhood, unfulfilled dreams of living in rural America and our admiration for psychic medium John Edward. Ours was an eclectic combination of commonalities that somehow naturally tied together during our chat.

Tori Spelling, New York Times best-selling author, has a nice ring to it, and adding to her growing literary resume is her recently published children’s book entitled, Presenting… Tallulah. The story is about a little girl born into a world of privilege and formalities who dreams of simply fitting in with her classmates and living life as an ordinary girl, a striking resemblance to Tori’s own somewhat sheltered childhood. Apart from Tallulah’s spunky independent personality, the character looks strikingly like a young Tori with her sandy blonde hair and large brown eyes. Complete with beautifully detailed illustrations by artist Vanessa Brantley Newton, Presenting… Tallulah provides a visually stimulating journey for children, along with a poignant message about a little girl’s desire to show people who she really is, despite her pristine appearance.

PR.com (Allison Kugel): I read your children’s book (Presenting… Tallulah) to my seventeen month old son last night. I don’t know if it’s meant for boys, but he enjoyed it.

Tori Spelling: It’s totally meant for boys! Liam loved it.

PR.com: I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that Tallulah is little Tori (laughs)…

Tori Spelling: Tallulah is loosely based on me, yes.

PR.com: Does Tallulah’s story reflect how you felt as a kid?

Tori Spelling: In some ways. I definitely didn’t have that home life. My mom and dad were really cool; they weren’t strict like that. But since I was telling a story about a little girl I made that part up. At school I did feel that way a lot. I felt like I was teased by the other kids for who I was and what we had.

PR.com: Was there anyone in particular when you were young who made you feel more normal or more comfortable in your own skin?

Tori Spelling: In the book, Tallulah has a best friend named Max, who is based on my best friend in real life. And he has definitely been that person for me. In the story they grow up together, but in real life, my best friend Mehran and I have been best friends since we were fifteen. So he is definitely that. And I was always into animals. My animals always made me feel normal, and in the book she has [her dog] Mimi who is based on my pug who passed away, Mimi La Rue.

PR.com: Can you remember who your favorite literary character was or what your favorite book was when you were little?

Tori Spelling: Yes, it was definitely Goodnight Moon.

Read the rest of this entry…

Tori Spelling reveals the secret to her success — talk it out!

In a relationship, “I think communication is the key,” Tori says. “I know that sounds like a boring tip, but it’s so true! You forget to communicate … I think it’s very important to always make eye contact, to make physical contact .. to keep the open dialogue going.”

She’s also a party girl! Inviting guests to splash around in her pool, she says, “I love to throw parties for my kids, so I’m having all my friends over — and all their kids over — for an end of summer back to school party.” Co-sponsor Sony NEX Cameras provided their newest shooter to record the event with snapshots and video.

“I know most parents are really excited when their kids go back to school, but I’m really sad,” the Hollywood mom says. Over the summer, she and hubby Dean McDermott have taken their two children on weekend trips and getaways, as well as making progress poolside.

Liam and Stella have been working really hard on their backstrokes. Let me just tell you, they’re really good swimmers.” she says proudly.

Watch the video for more.

From ET Online

Between filming a reality show and embarking on a nationwide book tour, Tori Spelling says it can be hard to balance her career with her home life.

“I’m still working on trying to balance it all, and it’s a struggle I deal with every single day. I want to do it all!” Spelling, 37, tells UsMagazine.com. “I’m passionate about everything in my life. Obviously my family and my kids are my priority. I want to be that stay-at-home mom, but I want to build an empire at the same time.”

The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum is quick to admit that raising Liam, 3, and Stella, 2, has sometimes taken a toll on her marriage to Dean McDermott.

“Four years into a marriage, we never thought we’d be having these issues and having problems,” she says. “But you never think ahead what it’s like to have kids, and a lot of our issues came from different view points on parenting.”

So how do the two parents find a compromise?

“We had communication breakdown, but we’ve worked through that. We’re still working on stuff, but I think relationships are a work in progress,” Spelling tells Us. “It all takes work, but if you love that person, you’re willing to do the work.”

And when things do get rough, Spelling says she only has to look at her children to regain her perspective.

“They’re best friends. They do everything together,” she gushes. “Stella’s new thing is that she sings ‘Single Ladies’ and dances to it. No joke, she shakes her hips! And people are like, ‘Is that normal? She watches Beyonce?’ And I’m like, ‘No, she watches Chipmunks: The Squeakquel — they do it in that!’”

From US Magazine

Tori Spelling’s been very busy for the past couple years. She juggles a husband, two kids, a reality show, a jewelry line and now she’s written a third book entitled “Uncharted TerriTORI”.

The book is an honest and open discourse on her life — from her marriage to Dean McDermott to the relationship with her mother to her career in the limelight.

The print and online tabloids follow actress Tori Spelling’s every move, and paparazzi literally wait on the street for her to emerge from her Encino, Calif., home.

That’s one price of fame, and Spelling has paid it “since I was 17,” she said. She’s certainly had her troubles – most of them sensationalized.

In the 1980s, Spelling, 37, appeared in a string of TV shows produced by her father, the late Aaron Spelling. But it was her 10-year role as Donna Martin in his “Beverly Hills 90210″ series, and appearances in made-for-TV and independent movies, that established her in the public consciousness.

For the past five years, Spelling and her second husband, actor Dean McDermott, have produced and starred in their own reality show on the Oxygen Network, “Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood.” They have two young children, Liam and Stella.

Spelling’s two autobiographies, “sTori Telling” (2008) and “Mommywood” (2009), were best-sellers. Though her trademark wit is again front and center in her new book, “uncharted terriTORI” (Gallery, $25, 224 pages), she confronts some serious issues as well.

I caught up with Spelling on Monday as she waited in the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport for a connecting flight to Tampa, Fla., where her book tour was to continue.

Q. What about the new book?

A. This one gets a lot deeper than the others. I started out thinking it would be my funny stories and anecdotes, but it took a different turn.

Q. There’s an anecdote in it about you contacting the late Farrah Fawcett.

A. It was during a reading on the phone with (celebrity psychic) John Edward. We have the same publicist. I thought, “Oh, this’ll be cool, maybe my dad will come through.” Instead, John said, “Farrah Fawcett’s coming through.” He was really surprised, too. She wanted me to let her family know she’s happy and OK. I wrote a letter to Ryan O’Neal, explaining the story. I said, “Please don’t think I’m crazy, I’m simply passing on a message.”

Q. Your dramatic weight loss last year was rumored to have been an eating disorder, but you say it was the swine flu.

A. It was. I’ve definitely recovered from the flu part, but the complications from it led to a breakdown of my immune system, which is slowly starting to rebuild. My stomach is still kind of a mess.

Q. You opened a Twitter account for your 3-year-old son, Liam.

A. I did. So far he has 25,000 followers.

Q. Has your husband, Dean, recovered from his most recent motorcycle accident?

A. He’s out of the hospital and home, at least, but he’s still in so much pain he can barely walk or lift the kids.

Q. You were estranged from your mother, Candy, and have publicly feuded with her, but you spent Mother’s Day with her.

A. Our relationship is really good now. It was a conscious choice on both our parts to leave the past in the past and not dwell on figuring out what went wrong. We realize that today’s a new day.

Q. You literally grew up on TV. Did you watch many of your dad’s shows, like “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”?

A. Oh, my God, yes – religiously. And it wasn’t just because I had to, it was because they were amazing shows.

On weekends, he’d sit there with scripts and rewrite page after page of every show he had. He would always ask me, “What do you think of this character?” I would always be his little casting assistant. He was so detail-oriented, I think that’s where I get my type-A personality.

Q. What do you watch now?

A. A lot of reality TV. Right now we’re big into the Food Network because it has adult shows the kids will watch with us. It’s a lot better for them than cartoons.

Q. Your life has long been an open book.

A. It’s really hard to get privacy. When we’re at home, that’s our private moment. If there’s an element missing (from my life), it’s probably “me.” In the process of taking care of my family and building our businesses, I’ve lost a little bit of “me” time. I would love to have more “me” back in there so I can enjoy my family and our successes. Frankly, I don’t always have enough time to do that. I’m working on it.

Q. Looking over your career, have the media treated you fairly?

A. Do they treat anyone fairly? I love it when people say, “If it bothers you, just stop reading that stuff about you.” But I’d rather know what they’re saying than not know. I’m used to it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt my feelings. The worst parts are what they say about my marriage and my weight, which simply aren’t true.

Q. Any message for your fans?

A. I want them to know that everything’s OK. With all the negatives out there, their love and support brighten my life every single day.

Source

Actress Tori Spelling calls on a layover from an airport in Texas, and since you’ve just finished reading a chapter in her new book that talks about her dire fear of flying, you ask how her nerves are holding up.

“I’m actually doing better,” she says, in a soft-spoken voice. “I’m starting to get over my fear, I think.”

Which would be a big help, for the 37-year-old actress, author and entrepreneur can’t stop working, and a lot of that work – including a book tour that brings her to Borders in Costa Mesa on Tuesday – requires travel back and forth across the country.

Her new book is “Uncharted TerriTORI,” and it more or less charts her life in the last few years: a reality series on Oxygen, a so-called feud with her mother Candy Spelling, motherhood and a workaholic lifestyle.

“Every time I finish a book, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this thing just happened, and that thing happened,’” Spelling says of the motivation to write another. “And my fans keep saying, ‘We’ve read both your books, when is another one coming out?’”

She says she gets her work ethic – overwork ethic, perhaps – from her father, the late and legendary TV producer Aaron Spelling. And she’s chosen to open a lot of her private life to the world – through the books and the TV show and the Twitter feed – because it’s what’s made her career a success after earlier acting jobs such as the original “Beverly Hills 90210″ ended.

“I don’t really have any regrets.” Spelling says. “I was out there acting. And no matter what I did people had a perception of me.

“And I remember just wishing they just knew me,” she says. “I wish they could put aside all that background stuff and know me as a person.

“Then I opened up and said I’m going to show them with the (reality) show and the books and it changed.”

As for one of the issues raised in the new book, her workaholic tendencies, Spelling says she working on it, but then lists more upcoming projects than most people would tackle in a year or two.

There’s a sixth season of “Tori & Dean” coming to the Oxygen network, and a new series, too, “Tori & Dean Weddings,” in which she and husband Dean McDermott plan weddings for couples. Her first children’s book, “Presenting Tallulah,” comes out in September. She’s shooting a talk-show pilot for ABC, and, well, you get the picture, right? There’s still work to be done on balancing life as a wife and mother with work, she admits.

“I think over the course of the book I realized that,” Spelling says of the lessons the self-reflection and writing taught her. “I didn’t have a lot of time for me, so I’m still working on that part.”

From the OC Register

Tori Spelling is synonymous with many things: 90210, Aaron Spelling’s daughter, and being super skinny. But few would categorize her as a businesswoman. But, over the past few years Tori Spelling has done a great job at excelling in the world of business and making a name for herself as an entrepreneur. She came into the Forbes studio do an interview with me about the business ventures she’s involved with.

As the mom of two young children, Tori Spelling has her hands full constantly. She always wants to make sure that her children learn life’s lessons every day. On the topic of money, Tori was very candid. She told me she will make sure she teaches her children how to handle money, how to make great investments, and how to handle a checkbook.

“I had a very luxurious life, a life of wealth. Unfortunately, my parents really didn’t discuss money with us. We weren’t taught how to handle money. So when I started to make my own money on 90210, I didn’t know about savings, I didn’t know about investments. I had to learn the hard way. I had to go from having everything, to making it on my own, to losing everything, and then having to rebuild again the right way, but the smart way.”

You’d think that Tori Spelling showing up three hours late to her own book release party was the ultimate snub.

But don’t judge this tell-all by its cover.

Spelling had spent the last four hours signing autographs at a local Borders store, and insisted on talking with every person in line and posing for snapshots.

An entrepreneur, Spelling wears many (presumably stylish) hats. She and her husband, actor Dean McDermott — along with the couple’s children Liam, 3, and Stella, 2 — star in their own reality TV show, “Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood.” Spelling also has her own jewelry line, designs children’s clothing, and is a working actress, spokeswoman and author.

“The great thing about what I do is I only take on work and businesses that are organic to me and I’m passionate about. It’s kind of a blend of my life because at some point, my life became my business, and my business is my life … which is a hard balance to strike,” Spelling said.

In her latest book, “uncharted terriTORI,” Spelling tackles eating disorder rumors (she says she had H1N1), the truth about her marriage, her friendships (or lack thereof) with her former “Beverly Hills, 90210″ co-stars, motherhood and the thawing of her icy relationship with her own mother.

Spelling was eager to set the record straight about all talk of anorexia. “I address all of my health issues in the book,” she told CNN. “And I think it’s really irresponsible to label someone with an eating disorder. I pride myself on being an inspiration to women out there, and I want them to have a healthy body image. I have a daughter of my own, so I think they should really do research and get their facts straight.”

Regarding her marriage, Spelling says, “Dean and I haven’t hid the fact that we’ve had a rough year.” She attributes what she refers to as the couple’s “four-year crossroads” to a communications breakdown, differing opinions on parenting and McDermott’s opposition to her own self-proclaimed “workaholic tendencies.”

In her book, Spelling said she had come to terms with the fact that, like all couples, she and McDermott were in an “ebb” phase, and that things weren’t always going to “flow.” She wrote: “If someone says they’re in a perfect relationship — they’re lying. And I was the girl who went into it wanting the perfect relationship.”

Although the internet is rampant with stories about Spelling receiving the silent treatment from the old “90210″ gang, she was asked about the possibility of her character, Donna Martin, returning to the small screen on the new “90210.” “You know what,” Spelling told CNN. “I totally would, but they haven’t called me. For the fans, I would.”

Spelling, famous among her friends for throwing elaborate parties, is currently shooting a new reality show with the Oxygen network. “We’re currently filming ‘Tori & Dean: Weddings,’ ” she says, “which is really amazing because everyone knows I love planning a party, and I specifically love planning a wedding and I’m all about love. Dean and I have been working on our relationship this year and kind of getting back to us. And really, what’s better than love and a party? So there you have the perfect wedding. And we have this great, unbelievable opportunity to plan people’s dream weddings and kind of navigate young couples through the process of getting married — what their relationship is now and what they can look forward to and guide them through that.”

When asked about the return of “Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood,” which just wrapped up its fourth season, Spelling told CNN, “No official pickup has been announced, but if the fans bring us back, I think there’s a very good chance. The fans are worried that this is a replacement, but we plan on doing both shows, so the great thing about that is they’ll get two sets of ‘Tori & Dean’ two times a year instead of one set one time a year.”

Spelling’s next writing project is a children’s book, due in September. “I am really excited about that,” she told CNN. “I love writing, it’s a passion of mine and I love my kids, and I really wanted to do a children’s book. I’m working with my same publishers, Simon and Schuster, and when they told me they wanted to do a children’s book, and I was like, ‘Yes! I am so in!’ So I dedicated this book to Liam and Stella — it’s called ‘Presenting … Tallulah,’ and it’s about a little girl standing up for who she is and believing in herself.”

Spelling also shared an anecdote about Stella: “Her new thing is she sings ‘Single Ladies’ and she dances to it. No joke, she shakes her hips!” Spelling says the little girl didn’t learn it from her. “She watched ‘Chipmunks: The Squeakquel’. They do it in that!”

From CNN