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 dyed my hair about 42 different colours, and kids can be pretty judgmental about people who are different. But instead of breaking down and conforming, I stood firm. That is also probably why I was unhappy.

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.

I like to look for gifts throughout the year. If I find the perfect item for someone, I put it in my "gift closet" and keep it for the next holiday. But I often get too excited and just give it to them before!

We were probably the last people in the country to get a VCR and we didn't have cable. There wasn't any admiration of glamour, no, 'I want to look like them or have that lifestyle', because everyone in my town had the same lifestyle. So I didn't think, 'Ooh, a movie star's birthday!' I just thought, 'What?'

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.

Even when I did Ryan Gosling's movie (Lost River), we had a very '80s kind of vibe and I would say for two or three months after that, I was dressing in a very sort of '80s way.