Soap Opera Digest: What type of mother are you?
Eva Tamargo: I'm just as strict as my parents were. I think the difference is, I don't clip their wings; I let them be who they are. My strictness is the normal stuff, like [they're not allowed] to talk back. I encourage them to be who they are.

Digest: Your daughter, Gabby, is turning 13 this summer. Have you run into any pre-teen problems with her?
Tamargo: It started a year ago. She's very smart. She's mini-me. I teach them to be their own person, do their own thinking and make their own decisions, and sometimes it comes to bite me in the butt because if I reprimand her and say something she doesn't like, she's like, "That's my opinion, and that's who I am and you're just going to have to accept it. I say, "You can be your own person, but you still are a minor. You live under my roof." It's a battle. Girls tend to be more intuitive to what life is really about. I try to snow her on some stuff. She told me, "Why do you have to analyze everything I say? You're not a therapist." I'm like, "I'm not analyzing it. It's called parenting."

Digest: Do Gabby or your son, Matthew, want to act?
Tamargo: My daughter is in a performing arts school, but she's more into the music and dancing, not so much the acting. I have a feeling that they both will be in the field. It's inevitable. I see it in them both. I don't discourage it, but I don't encourage it. I think children should not work until they're out of high school. You miss out on what those years are all about, and I think it gives children a misconception of the real world by missing school and being famous. It's hard enough when you're in your 20s, forget 12. It's a surreal life that I would not want them to be in right now.

Digest: How old were you when you started acting?
Tamargo: I started professionally, probably 19, 20. I was out of high school and college already. It wasn't until I was in my late 20s that my father accepted it. He thought it was not a good career. He felt it was so unstable and everybody in the business is either a drug addict or messed up. To some extent, it's true. A lot of actors are tortured souls.

Digest: Did your father not accepting you being an actress make you want to do it more?
Tamargo: Probably. It was in me anyway. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

Digest: When did you realize you wanted to act?
Tamargo: Fourth grade. I was very shy as a child I was good in English. We used to get a thing called Scholastic Aptitude, it's a leaflet book that we would get weekly and it had a story at the end that you could act out, like a mini play. One day, my teacher, Ms. Toronto, said, "Come on, Eva, you're funny. Read it." I was funny and everybody laughed. I was like, "Okay, I want to be an actress." It changed my whole life. She took me under her wing and I was in the talent show, and every year after that.