I know from growing up in the spotlight, as it were, that the most important thing is your family.

For me, hour-long drama was always the thing I felt the most comfortable doing, and I've played so many dramatic roles in the theater.

I was lucky enough to be able to grow and mature in a natural way as an actress.

Beauty Queen' is the weirdest, strangest, and most perfect play to do before 'Hedda Gabler', because there are so many similar issues for Maureen and Hedda. I had played leading ladies before but couldn't really hook into them. After 'An American Daughter' and 'Beauty Queen', I had all the ballast.

Oh, mercy, I think we're all storytellers, you know. You think of the excuses you told your parents for why you got home late. I just never gave it up.

Short of finding a place on the witness protection programme, you don't get many opportunities to completely reinvent your life. Going to university changes that. Away from home, away from parents, away from anyone who remembers you from school, you can pretend to be far cooler and more experienced than you are.

I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I'm trying to be what my mother wasn't for me. My mother's battled depression, so I understand it now as a parent, some of the things that she must have been going through.

People came to my parents' parties because they were going to have fun and, if lucky, our mother would belly dance. What they didn't know was that the hostess made sure every morsel placed in front of them was pure and without anything artificial, no matter what the cost.