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The Lesson That Took Ali MacGraw the Longest to Learn

Season 5 Episode 518
Aired on 09/28/2014 | CC tv-14
Actress Ali MacGraw was born in New York, the daughter of two well-educated but struggling commercial artists. Ali says her father often drank too much and at times physically abused her younger brother. Determined to "fix" the family chaos, Ali became what she calls "perfect with a capital P." She attended Wellesley College on a scholarship, became an assistant for fashion legend Diana Vreeland and had a meteoric rise to fame in Hollywood.

Still, Ali says it's taken a lifetime to overcome her childhood need to please. "I think it goes back to childhood survival stuff," she says. "We were told a white lie is okay. No, a white lie is a lie." In the video above, Ali opens up about why simply learning to say no was the lesson that took her the longest to learn.

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