Q 6

PLAYBOY: You've been married twice. What would it take for you to try again, and make it stick?

Patti D'Arbanville: Someone over thirty-five who has pretty much decided on what he wants to do in life; someone who understands what I want to do in my life; someone who wants to have four kids. [Laughs] Before, when I got married, it was just important to find someone to take care of me. And I wanted to walk down the aisle with my father, in a white dress. Now companionship is more important. I don't need anybody to take care of me. I've figured that out by myself. But now my independence gets in the way. Also, I have the attention span of a gnat. So the guy has to be pretty interesting. Basically, I like Italian men. I like big men. I like big, independent, strong men who won't follow me around like a puppy dog when they fall in love. I like men before they fall in love with me. After they fall in love, I don't know what happens. They get stupid. I don't get it.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: What's the least amount of time it has taken you to say "I love you"?

Patti D'Arbanville: [Embarrassed] And mean it? A month. And it was a mistake.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: There have been a lot of self-help books for women in the past twenty years. What's your best advice for women of the Nineties?

Patti D'Arbanville: Boy, you're really asking the wrong person. [Laughs] Hmm. OK. Just don't take any shit, ever. Just be true to yourself, and if they can't keep up with the program, then tell them to go away.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: Say you've had your eye on a big Italian guy for a while, and now he's coming to your place for dinner. What do you cook to seduce?

Patti D'Arbanville: Oooh. He can cook for me. [Laughs] I would make a sauce that my girlfriend Maria told me about. Anne Francis gave her the recipe; it's excellent. You use pork neck bones and sausage, hot sausage, and lots of garlic, fresh tomatoes, and you cook it for, like, three days. And then fresh pasta that you make yourself with a little machine. Spaghetti, please. Keep it simple. And green salad: radicchio. No tomatoes, because of the sauce. Scallions, three kinds of lettuce, garlic. Roasted green peppers in olive oil and some wine, if you want. And a big loaf of Italian bread.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: What kind of gift from a guy makes you immediately suspicious of his intentions?

Patti D'Arbanville: Oh, God. It depends, really; on whether or not you like the guy. The same gift can have a different effect. The oddest gift I ever got was from a guy I stood up once. He had been to the house and had brought me a St. Michael's candle. And a bottle of wine. Well, first of all, I don't drink. And second, it was just too intrusive. It was like he thought he had figured me out. It was too intimate right away. Also a little cocky. Or wimpy, depending on how you look at it.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: What's a better teacher of commitment--career or relationship?

Patti D'Arbanville: Career. God, how horrible to say that, but it's true. I'm so much more committed to my career than I've ever been to any relationship outside of that with my son. [Pauses] Actually, he's number one. I would leave everything tomorrow if I had to for him. So maybe the best answer is children. They are the source of the unconditional love that is hard to find in a man-woman relationship.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: Your parents never married. When did you most wish that they had officially tied the knot?

Patti D'Arbanville: [Laughs] Well, the thing is, I never knew they weren't married until I was twenty-one years old. I'd just come back home from Europe. It was a holiday, a hideous Christmas--that's the only holiday I hate--and my mother told me she had gotten a divorce. I was stunned. I said, "Gee, thanks for telling me beforehand. Mom," and I stormed out of the house. She ran after me and we had a dramatic scene on the street corner. To make me feel better, she said, "Actually, we were never married!" [Smiles] I said, "Why didn't you tell me that? It's so much more interesting than 'We got a fucking divorce.' Take a walk."