Cybill Shepherd made a splash in film with her debut in "The Last Picture Show" but became best known for her television roles in "Moonlighting" and "Cybill." Last year, the 58-year-old actress appeared in several episodes of Showtime's "The L Word" with her daughter and also guest-starred on "Samantha Who." Shepherd can be seen on USA Network's "Psych" beginning Friday. She talks about beauty, bravery and Botox.

Q: You've admitted knowing you were beautiful, but did that sort of confidence have drawbacks?

A: Yes. Before I was beautiful, my part in the family was to play the perfect child. I was a towheaded perfect child. So my brother and sister got the short end of the stick. Let's put it this way, I had to be perfect. The beauty thing comes from having the golden hair at a very early age. I also ran into a barbed-wire fence by accident when I was 7. It almost ripped my lip off. Over 200 stitches, plastic surgery and I still have a scar right under my left nostril. I quickly became not the golden beautiful child anymore. I became hideously ugly. It was a great lesson. So, to answer your question, the negative impact would be that I would not be considered for more roles.

Q: How did you cope with the criticism aimed at you? Do you cope with it differently now?

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A: It still hurts when I have denigrating reviews. I did a one-woman show, "Curvy Widow" ( I didn't write it), in San Francisco and in Atlanta. In San Francisco there was a huge variety of reviews. What really changed my attitude is getting to read the extreme reviews from the best to the worst.

Q: You've been married twice and had numerous love affairs with powerful men. Did you find what you were looking for?

A: I've had a lot of lessons and made a handful of really great friends, who will be my friends for the rest of my life.

Q: Which relationship came closest to being perfect?

A: Well, I have really two. One is the man I met in 1968 named Jim Rogers, and the other is the man who cast me in "The Last Picture Show," Peter Bogdanovich. Yeah, that's really pretty great. Someone once said that "a marriage is a lifetime conversation." I never married either of these two men, but we continue to sustain a lifetime conversation, and we were once upon a time lovers, though not anymore.

Q: Was there any reluctance at all in doing "The L Word"? Did you conference with your children?

A: Yes, what I did was I talked to my children first. Everybody was thrilled. They jumped up and down. They did happy dances. Certainly one of the most important things in life is one wants one's children to cultivate a more expanded sense of justice. A sense that civil rights really do extend to every human being. What is it in people that makes them decide to limit certain people's civil rights based on color of skin or religion or sexual preference?

Q: Would you call yourself brave?

A: Yes. My parents taught me that, and there was something they both did that was really quite extraordinary -- they encouraged me in sports. You know, growing up in the '50s and '60s, this was not the usual thing for one's father to teach [a girl] how to throw a football and kick a football in the front yard. I think it is crucial for women and girls because there is so much media bull for women to not look like women and be way too thin. I am also deeply afraid. Courage doesn't mean you are not afraid. You do what you want to do in spite of it. Sometimes I face it. Sometimes I just turn away from it. Certainly that one-woman show, "Curvy Widow," was terrifying.

Q: Many women of a certain age are having things done to help maintain a youthful appearance. Have you resisted?

A: It's a big issue for me because I feel a responsibility that I should do something. I have fear of doing it. I will do things. I will be doing things. I haven't yet. I just cringe at the thought of needles going in my face. I'm not afraid of shots, having almost died of pneumonia when I was 5 and again when I was 7. I had to get shots every day. I'm just afraid of what might happen to my face [laughs]. I have fear of what it's going to look like afterward.

Q: Well, you seem comfortable in your skin. Are you?

A: Most of the time. That's taken a lot of work. As we age, particularly as women, you never imagine that your body is going to actually look the way it's going to look. If you have the opportunity to know your mother as she grows older -- my mother is 82 -- you see the future. You try to keep a healthy perspective, but it's shocking.

Q: Now that it's been a while, do you regret anything you revealed in your book "Cybill Disobedience"?

A: No. But I didn't write it for the money. I wrote it because I was 50 years old. I wanted to look back at my life and discover things in the process. So in order to do that, I had to be very honest.

Q: Did you always have a sense of humor?

A: Yeah, I mean my family, we always laughed a lot. My best friend from kindergarten on was Jane Howard, and she was hysterically funny, and we loved being funny together and still do. We just had our 40th class reunion. We had a blast.