My children are 10 and three, and the longing and the need for them is incredibly powerful.

Well, I've got two small children and this is a very important time for me to be around them.

For the first time in a while, I must be honest, I really genuinely look forward to coming to work every day.

All good dramas are rife with conflicts, and the conflicts have to be resolved. What I think is so great about a show that takes place in a hospital is that you have so many different people with different needs. Sometimes all those can be in conflict. The drama of Heartland also comes from the group of people waiting, and they are sometimes agonizingly waiting for a new organ for their body in order to survive. So the show is so much about survival, which creates a sense of urgency to get the organs. I think that sense of urgency is probably the most prominent dramatic quality to the show.

I define success as being comfortable with yourself and your life. And that is about as good as it gets, really.

Most of us are flawed, complicated people, and we're all trying very hard to disguise that or hide it from the public. Ultimately, we respond to someone who's capable of doing heroic things but has issues or problems in their life that they can't seem to resolve. I believe audiences identify with that. All of us have those secrets and those things that we wish we could improve about ourselves. And when you have someone who's heroic and flawed, I think it makes us feel better about ourselves.

My children are 10 and three, and the longing and the need for them is incredibly powerful.