Awards season is always a huge amount of fun whether you're a part of it or not. It's always really exciting seeing what films are coming and a lot of new talent as well.

The growing-up-fast part weirdly happened between the ages of 15 and 22.

Growing up, I had a very happy childhood, with two parents who are still very much together.

My parents met because my father was an actor friend of one of my mom's brothers, but my mother has never set foot on the stage - she's quite shy. So it's a strange thing because people say, 'Oh, coming from acting parents,' when the idea of acting would literally make my mother just want to throw up.

My mother had me when she was 15. My father died before I was born. So my mother was a teenage widow, and she used herself as her greatest example so I wouldn't end up in her position.

I'm not sure anyone goes through a cancer scare unchanged. I know it changed me in so many ways. But I was fortunate to have had a rare cancer that's slow-growing and one that allowed me to skip the chemical cocktails that would have put me into early menopause.

The catalyst for much of this change is the growing support for republicanism.

I didn't watch much television growing up, and before I did 'Boston Legal,' I had no understanding of what it was like for a viewer to look forward to finding out what was going to happen the next week.