One of my favourite messages about The Pirate Fairy is that the story is about appreciating your own talents.

I often played the nerdy friend or the goofy sidekick or the sort of naïve movie character in some ways.

I think Joan's advice would be: always know more than anyone else, always be discreet as possible. And never cry at work.

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 thought, well, you might see curves there, but that's just a bone - so even if I lose weight that's not going to change anything. That's how I look. That's my shape. Do the math.

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.

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.