ONTD

Nearly a year after a breakdown, Britney Spears says she feels as if she has matured.
To be exact, "I feel like an old person now," she says in Rolling Stone's next issue, out Friday. "I do! I go to bed at, like, 9:30 every night, and I don't go out or anything."

Spears turns 27 on Dec. 2, the same day her album, Circus, hits stores. "This is going to be the album that cements her legend status," says her manager, Larry Rudolph.

Indeed, the pop star has come a long way from her two trips to hospital psychiatric wards this year, the magazine says. After the last trip, in early February, her father, Jamie, filed for legal conservatorship so that he and attorney Andrew Wallet would oversee her finances and personal affairs.

Interviewing the star is a "rigorously micromanaged process," according to Rolling Stone.

"We were never left alone together, and my questions had to be submitted ahead of time for approval," reporter Jenny Eliscu writes.

Rudolph says, "Her job is to be Britney Spears, and unfortunately, that job bleeds into her personal life and creates this odd situation where she needs to have security people around her all the time."

That goes for dates, too. Recently, Spears was accompanied by her assistant, Brett, and Rudolph's colleague, Adam Leber. "Right when we got there, we just knew it was just bad," Spears says. "He looked like an older version of Harry Potter, but skinnier. … So I had to get dessert first. And the other date I had, the guy was really, really tall and a lot older. … We're trying to ask him questions, like, 'OK, you're into martial arts, so what kind of martial arts are you into?' And he was like, 'Oh, all kinds.' … But you know how silly we are, so we were just cracking up."

She turns serious on the topic of her children. Despite losing custody of her sons, Preston, 3, and Jayden, 2, to her ex-husband Kevin Federline, Spears has been able to see them more often, thanks in part to the conservatorship.

"Every time they come to visit me, I think about how they're such special people," she says.

She is critical of her ex and says the children "are starting to learn words like 'stupid,' and Preston says the f-word now sometimes. He doesn't get it from us. He must get it from his daddy. I say it, but not around my kids."

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