Bette Midler always knew she "was just going to make" in showbiz

The 78-year-old actress told The Hollywood Reporter: "This kind of compulsion, a determination. I was just going to make it no matter what. In my defence, I couldn't do anything else. I'd had jobs before and had always failed at them. When I was a salesgirl, I was completely bewildered when someone came in to return something.

"I wouldn't understand how it was done. I worked for Western Union for months. I didn't understand how to send a telegram.

"So, it's not that I didn't try to do other things, but if it didn't try to do other things, but it didn't have a performative aspect to it, I didn't know how it was done. And I was terribly lucky."

Bette - who has 37-year-old daughter Sophie with her husband of 40 years, Martin von Haselberg, 75- also explained that she knew she had "hit the big time" after her work travel arrangements became much more five-star in nature.

She said: "It wasn't evident until I moved from nightclubs to theatres to Carnegie Hall and then to arenas. That's when I really hit the big time, because all the travel changed. Before you were riding in a car or a truck or a bus, and the next thing you knew, you were on a private plane, after my first couple of movies in the 80s. I remember the first time my label booked me into The Connaught [the hotel in London] and the butler arrived to ask if there was anything I needed. That's when I said, 'Oh, this is something different.'"

The 'Wind Beneath My Wings' hitmaker also discussed her her 1973 sold-out homecoming stadium show in her hometown of Honolulu, Hawaii - which marked a decade since she graduated from high school - and explained how "fantastic" it was to have her late parents there.

Bette said: "It was absolutely fantastic. Everybody turned out. We had a luau and dancing girls, and I ate kalua pig. My old crew from high school came. My mom and dad came."