My mother accidentally gave me food poisoning. She fed me baby carrots for a snack before Christmas dinner - but they had expired in June! I threw up for the next 24 hours.

I only became a celebrity because I had a kid. Before I was pregnant nobody cared. I joke to my agent that having a baby made my career.

Becoming a mom allowed me to just relax in a way I never had before. I used to care a lot about what I looked like in public or what people thought of me. I care at least 40 percent less now.

We didn't name Birdie before she was born. When she came out I said, 'I think we gotta go with Birdie, I think that's her name.'

For me, coming to work and laughing is so much more preferable than coming to work and having to cry over a corpse or something. That's a drag.

After 'Freaks and Geeks,' I dealt with several producers who wanted to cover up all my beauty marks, every single mole on my body. They tried to cover them on my first two episodes of 'Dawson's Creek,' and it just looked ridiculous, so I had to put my foot down. But it's not something I'm insecure about.

And then I went to 'Dawson's Creek,' which is a show that was, for better or for worse, all about the language. It was a word-perfect show, which I'd never had any experience with. And it was really shocking for me. I felt really hemmed in. At the time, it wasn't my favorite working experience.