I was a good student, I was good at soccer, I was vice president of the student council, I was a pretty girl.
I don't want everyone to think of me as just 'that kid who called Jesse Jackson a communist in middle school.' That's why I decided to become a famous actress.
My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life. My heart is in helping people and in the less materialistic side of things, but there's the side of me that's more polished. If I were to live in Africa, serving the poor, the number-one thing I'd miss wouldn't be running water or electricity—it would be style...being able to get dressed up and feel beautiful.
I cried myself to sleep wishing I was ugly because men leered and disrespected me, because they assumed things about my mental capacity or my physical willingness based on the way I look.
The difference in my body from pre-pregnancy to post-baby was night and day. I didn't have the strength, I didn't have the flexibility, I didn't have the stamina, I didn't have the mobility. I felt like I was handicapped.
The people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life.
The directors did an amazing job and Josh Holloway is just he's just shining. I think that, of the people I started working with, he's one of the people I'm most impressed with. How he's grown and learned and he's been just stunning everyone with his performances.
I'm a very stubborn woman and I'm from a very stubborn family of headstrong women. I have sisters, so the women rule the coop in my house.
I'm a good Canadian girl. I miss all that good stuff. I miss tobogganing and I miss snowboarding, but I've also learned to surf and I've become a water baby which I used to be relatively terrified of the water and I kayak all the time now and I'm able to run year round on the beach which you can't obviously do in Canada.
I am kind of prudish and I have very strict standards about how I present myself. But one of the things that I've always stood by is that women are beautiful and sexy. We shouldn't be afraid of that. [But] we need to make sure that we present that beauty and that sexiness in a way that says we are in control of our bodies. We're strong, we're classy, we're beautiful, powerful beings to be reckoned with, not victims.
I definitely come down on the spiritual side. I think very few things in life happen by chance.
I just don't think that a lot of the time the messages we send kids prepare them for real life.
My family didn't have a lot of money, and I'm grateful for that. Money is the longest route to happiness.
When I got the job on 'Lost,' I was a broke university student living in the crappiest part of town, with a duct-taped back window on a broken-down car. I existed on peanut butter and tea.
There are jobs to be created on both sides of the climate argument. Whether we are investing in oil or sun, coal or wind, gas or algae, the economy will be stimulated by the investment. The economy, unlike each of us, is not swayed by ideology.
Money is the longest route to happiness.
A month and a half after my first audition, I won the role on Lost.
I consider acting a day job - it's not my dream; it's not my be-all, end-all.
