I've been telling everyone for weeks now about how I get to play Lois Lane. It's a big deal. There are a few characters throughout your life which everyone knows and this is one of them. I can't wait.

I've been telling everyone for weeks now about how I get to play Lois Lane. It's a big deal. There are a few characters throughout your life which everyone knows and this is one of them. I can't wait.

I auditioned for so many things - cops, lawyers, doctors and things but they were like, "She just seems too sweet. I don't see that hard side of her."

All of a sudden I was Joan [Mad Man] and they're going, "Oh, so she plays a badass in this." And I'm like, "Oh my god, I get to play badasses." Firefly was a little bit of that, but she started out as a mouse and then she turned into a dragon. But I never really had that opportunity. So all of a sudden people were like, "Oh, do you feel like you're being typecast?" I would say, "No, this is just opening the doors." No one thought I could do it and someone finally trusted me to do it.

In the beginning, it was odd to have so much attention brought to my body type. I thought, "Uh-oh, brace yourself." But everyone has been so positive. During the first season, a woman came up to me at dinner and said, "I just want to thank you - watching you has made me proud of my body." I thought, What an amazing thing for someone to say! To make anyone feel good about themselves makes me feel good.

I guess my mom raised me right. She was very celebratory of her body. I never heard her once say, "I feel fat." Back when I was modeling, the first time I went to Italy I was having cappuccinos every day, and I gained 15 pounds. And I felt gorgeous! I would take my clothes off in front of the mirror and be like, "Oh, I look like a woman." And I felt beautiful, and I never tried to lose it, 'cause I loved it.

I love my body as it is. People in the industry have been telling me to lose weight for years but I like the way I look. I give credit to my mom for helping me feel good about my appearance - for making sure I never felt embarrassed about my body, because she was never worried about looking too big.