I'd worked for Aaron Spelling before [Embraced] and I always felt like we had a nice connection. I pretty much walked in and looked at him like, "This is mine!" And by the time I was done with the audition, he was already speaking to me as if I had the role.

The role always attracts me. Sometimes I can read something and I can barely see the rest of the script.

Mark Frankel was just a very tender, thoughtful person, and that was really nice. At that point in life, I hadn't met a lot of people my senior who were that tender, and still doing well and making a real go of it. That was a treat, for sure.

A lot of people have a dissatisfaction or an anger in them, so as soon as something goes awry, they flip out.

When I went in for the [ Embraced] DVD interviews, I thought, "Good lord, it's 17 years later!" I thought that maybe I should do my make-up differently and put extra effort in, or I'd look like a different human being. It's very strange.

Aaron Spelling was a huge fan of vampires, and everything in that genre. He just really loved the entire subject of vampires and he was really passionate about it. If you really like the idea of this other world and the intricacies of it, because there were a lot of them, and once you're hooked, it's always something that's a fascination to you.

I grew up Irish Catholic with a bunch of kids at Catholic school.