Kirstie Alley: I'm a Compulsive Liar  6/14/05

Former Cheers star Kirstie Alley became a compulsive liar as a child and has battled against the unpleasant trait throughout her adult life. 

The curvy actress reveals in her new book How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life how she lived a fantasy life, creating stories to make her family appear more interesting to her school friends. And the lies ranged from pretending her grandmother trained rats to dance, to insisting her mother had abandoned her father. 

She recalls, "When I was young, I used to lie about the most casual things. It was a wonderful life, albeit only in my mind. "I rode in rodeos, and personally had 10 horses, not to mention monkeys, a llama and a zebra, "Oh, and just to add a bit of poignancy, my fabulously wealthy father was a single parent. "When you're not getting enough attention, or when your life is not very interesting, lying is the quickest, easiest surest way to perk things up."