CASSANDRA PETERSON

I knew I would grow up and wear a costume one day, and that's exactly what happened.

I love, love, love music - have since I was a kid, and I'm still really into music - and I became a singer because I was too stupid to learn how to play an instrument, I guess.

Horror, for me, has to involve some sort of fantasy. Horror is something that is in your dreams or your nightmares.

Every year, I have to spend another hour working out. Pretty soon I'll be spending eight hours working out just to fit in the costume. I have the feeling that the minute I stop doing the character, boom, Roseanne Barr.

Women like to be scared, but they don't like the blood and the gore, and especially movies that have violence and torture involving women. Women don't want to see that, I can tell you for damn sure right now.

I've made a career off of Halloween.

People think being Elvira is a lot of fun - and it is - but I was doing a lot more bizarre stuff before then, just being a dancer and a showgirl and traveling around Italy in a band and working for Playboy Club, and later being a model and meeting a million and one people and being kind of a groupie... It's all been really interesting.

If ever there was a holiday that deserves to be commercialized, it's Halloween. We haven't taken it away from kids. We've just expanded it so that the kid in adults can enjoy it, too.

People always say, 'Who is your audience?' and I could never put a finger on it - and I wouldn't want to put a finger on it.

How would Elvira run the state of California? Well, there isn't much I could do that is worse than what Arnold Schwarzenegger has done. Running it into the damn ground. If I was running the whole nation? I would have free Netflix movies for everyone.

I am very, very anti-slasher.

To me, the scariest movie ever made to this day is 'The Exorcist.' It still scares the living hell out of me, and it's because of the fantasy element. It's the exorcism. It's the Devil. It's not a guy breaking into your house trying to torture you or cut your whatever off. Those kinds of movies don't do it for me, and I don't call them horror.

It is so hard nowadays to find a movie that I like. I don't mind blood and gore. But I mind when its a slasher film, and its some guy looking for women. I am opposed to that kind of thing. Blood and gore? I love that kind of thing.

I had this grand idea that Elvira's kind of the Santa Claus of Halloween - at the malls, you'd have an Elvira there. Girls would dress as Elvira just like guys dress as Santa Claus, and it's not the real thing, but they'll pose for pictures, sign autographs. Of course, I couldn't go around to every mall, so we'd have to get more Elviras.

I would love to do something like 'Tosh.0,' where I host Internet clips. I did host 'Talk Soup,' which is similar. I love doing that, making fun of video clips on the Internet.

I sort of don't remember anything I did in the '70s.

I just count myself really lucky to have a career that I love and that continues to pay my rent.

I've met a lot of famous people. I'm lucky enough to have been able to be Elvira. I would probably have to say the most famous is probably Elvis Presley, though. I spent an evening, a night, and part of the next day with him.

[I] go to the Golden Globes, the Grammys, all the awards shows. Just stuff you would never get to do as a regular person were things that were really exciting for me.

I vaguely remember doing [all my] photo sessions, but definitely there were some surprises there for me.

I remember the '60s, I remember the '80s, but somehow I went directly from the '60s to the '80s.

I can't tell you how exciting it was, because Vincent Price had made a huge impression on me when I was a little kid. I just loved him in films. And so meeting him and becoming friends with him was a big deal for me.

I've probably said a million times in my life something about, "All those people are just lemmings. They'd follow each other off a cliff." Well, no such thing.

I was probably about 13 or 14, and I went by myself to the City Auditorium in Colorado Springs and saw the guy who wrote and sang "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini." Brian something. And I got to meet him and he signed an autograph for me, a little piece of paper. Brian Hyland! It was so bizarre.

I was your typical struggling actress. I went to every audition, took a million acting, dancing and singing lessons and spent years wondering where my next meal was coming from.