The one thing about being on 'ER' that has changed is that I'm more easily recognizable.

I think when things happen in our lives that we can't truly understand why they destroy us, it's because we can't truly understand or communicate it to anyone else. And that is what is destructive - you can't communicate it to the people that you love and it makes things deteriorate. Or you're hiding from yourself, or you're hiding from somebody else, and that was really fascinating to me... that life isn't like the movies and you can't always point to one thing and explain why you did things that ended up hurting you.

Yes, I'm very close to my family. And being that close to your family, I think you also struggle with how to become your own person.

I remember when I took the role on E.R., I thought, 'I haven't really been able to play a working class woman. I've played girls, I've played funny, but I haven't played a working class woman. That sounds like something I'd like to do.

The one thing about being on 'ER' that has changed is that I'm more easily recognizable.

I think there are great roles for women in television because there is time to allow those characters to evolve. Even if you're the wife or the girlfriend or whatever it is that we women are, playing those things on TV, they are much more drawn out and there are greater arcs for the role. The roles are more integral to the complexity of the story.

I love to work on a set whether it's mostly men or mostly women, but there's something about being in a community of women that changes the energy.