I still get nervous when I have a lot of makeup on, a big hairdo, and a dress.

I loved the domesticity of my life as a struggling actor. When I wasn't going to auditions, I could do things like cook dishes from scratch and take them to parties or be really thoughtful about birthdays and anniversaries.

I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I've just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I've read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that. I think that probably, at my core, if I had done no work on myself, I would probably be Laura from The Mysteries Of Laura, but I worked hard to be a more stable person because that's what I wanted out of my life.

I studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus.

I say it was like this accidental research that I did for eight years. I had no idea I was researching the role of my career. But yeah, and there was this one casting director named Allison Jones, and for five years she would call me in every year for a different TV show and she just really was a big supporter of mine.

I think I am an actress and I'm artistic and I love spontaneity and all of that, but I just decided really early on that if I didn't also try to ground myself I would probably end up like this character of Laura in A Little Help , or like so many young people in Hollywood, sort of go off the rails. So I'm pretty attached to my routines and my grounded ways.

I don't have real big aspirations to be a movie star. I would love to be on a long-running hit TV show. You end up playing a defining role.