Did your mom, a superior court judge who inspired Judging Amy, work throughout your childhood? My mom went to work when I was 3 years old. I remember when I was starting school in the early ’70s that very few moms worked. If they did, it was part-time or built around their child’s school schedule. But by the time I was in high school in the early ’80s, most of the moms worked. I had a lot of consistency. We had dinner the same as everyone else. By the time I was a preadolescent, I was crazy proud that my mom was the third woman judge in Connecticut!

Check out the behind-the-scenes photos of Amy and her family. How did you manage to go from one huge hit show, Judging Amy [1999 to 2005], to another big hit, Private Practice [2007 to present], both with great roles for a female actor? I look for complex, multidimensional roles. I’m not looking for strong women necessarily, because strong can be as confining as weak used to be. Judging Amy definitely raised the bar forever for me. I saw how I could bring all of myself to my work. I had a six-year relationship with the Judging Amy role. Was that hard to give up? I was hugely pregnant when I got the news that Judging Amy wasn’t picked up. Two weeks later, I gave birth to my son, Bodhi. So I was able to enjoy time off and chill with him. I did plays and movies until he was 2, and I knew I wasn’t looking for another single-lead show. I wanted an ensemble. I love the type of show Shonda Rimes created with Grey’s Anatomy, where actors can be funny, complex and neurotic. When I heard about her spinoff, Private Practice, I was interested. Is there such a thing as a typical workday for you? There is no typical day for me. That’s something I realized a while ago. I decided that I don’t have regularity with my days, but my kids have to have regularity with theirs. So we have a terrific nanny who comes in the morning because some days I leave before 5 a.m. With Judging Amy, I’d work 17-hour days because Amy was in every scene. With Private Practice, the amount I work each week depends on how much Violet there is in an episode. And sometimes my husband [director Brad Silberling] is shooting and sometimes he isn’t. If I want to be there for an important event for my kids, like the first day of school, I can put in a request for that a few weeks ahead. Your character on Private Practice, Violet, was involved in a harrowing plotline: One of her disturbed patients cut Violet’s baby out of her stomach. How did you react the first time you read that? I thought, Holy crap! After the readthrough, I thought, This is great; everyone else is acting in a romantic comedy, and I’m in a Quentin Tarantino movie. But I remember talking with Shonda, before KaDee Strickland became a central character [Charlotte King], about the fact that there were three women in the show around the age of 40. One had a child [Audra McDonald’s character, Naomi Bennett], and another had fertility issues [Kate Walsh’s character, Addison Montgomery]. I said, Violet doesn’t want to be a mom, so she’s the one who should get pregnant. That’s such an interesting and valid point of view. Was it hard to play Violet when she couldn’t connect to her own baby? It was really hard. I love babies. To be around babies and not look at them wasn’t easy for me. But it helped me understand Violet’s pain. It’s so natural to look down and gaze at a beautiful baby. Not to be able to do that said so much about what Violet was going through. She’s so afraid of damaging her child. And she’s a shrink, so she’s doing what she thinks is best for her baby. That’s what made her sympathetic. How soon after your own daughter, Charlotte, was born did you go back to work on Judging Amy? I went back to work when she was 3 months old—and I had breast milk leaking. I have a friend, an actress with three kids, who said that it’s so great when your kids are babies because you can put a crib in your trailer and they can follow your schedule. And I remember thinking, No, that won’t work for me. I wanted her to be home and have her routine. Mine changes too much. Is it ever difficult for your kids to say goodbye when you leave for work, or are they used to it? Being able to talk on the phone now that Charlotte is older has helped a lot. A very good friend of mine, a single mom, does movies and shoots in China. So she’ll get one visit, or she’ll get a call in the middle of the night. I’m lucky I’m right in town. It can be hard sometimes if they miss me, but here’s where my job is especially great: The door is always open. It’s not like I’m in a high-level meeting where a child would be disruptive. They can come visit me. When I did a play recently, they were so proud of me. Many parents have kids who have no idea what their job is. My kids understand I’m a storyteller. They get that I’m pretending to be somebody. What do they do on set? When I was in Judging Amy, Charlotte came to the set every day. I was still breastfeeding her. Otherwise there could have been days and days when I wouldn’t have seen her at all. She had her own trailer. With Private Practice, it’s part of my contract that my children have their own trailer so that they have someplace to come to. As they’ve gotten older and are having more of a life, they don’t visit as much. Charlotte is amazing on set. And the cranes fascinate Bodhi; he makes friends with all the grips. What’s the evening routine with your kids like? I think any parent will say that there are moments in the day when you have to get something done—your kids need to eat or take a bath. Charlotte is a good eater and was never a big sugar person. But Bodhi negotiates around food. I might say that if he eats a nice meal, he can have ice cream afterward. He’ll ask me, “How many bites of food? What exactly will I get?” I’m thinking we may have to take dessert off the table. But yesterday evening, after everyone had finished dinner, there was one of those moments of free play for all. I was reading. Charlotte was playing. Bodhi was chatting. It was a beautiful 30 minutes of downtime. I love that. Do you and your husband take turns, or is one the more hands-on parent day to day? We’re very equal. And the cool thing about our career paths is that we get to swap parenting roles depending on who is working. Neither one of us is the one who’s always working. He may be finishing a movie while I’m on hiatus. Then a lot of last year, Brad was around more. He has an office that he goes off to every day to write and do things. But if I’m not working, I take the kids to the beach. My work isn’t as regimented. What’s been incredible has been to see a change in Bodhi when he turned 31/2. I had been everything up to that point. But then he was so in love with his dad, so proud of his dad. They continue to have this love affair. Often if Bodhi’s riled up, he wants his dad. You and Brad met on the set of NYPD Blue? Yes—and I knew right away. Although I’m spiritually oriented, I don’t look for past-life experiences. But three times in my life it’s been undeniable. One was a theater mentor, one was Brad, and the third was Charlotte. With each I felt I was continuing a conversation that had already begun. It took Brad and me a month to hook up romantically. I thought maybe we’d make movies together. I wasn’t sure exactly what our connection would be. Have working and being a mom ever conflicted for you? Yes, a lot. I’m in agony all the time. I say to Brad that it’s confusing and agonizing all the time. I do think culturally it’s not as agonizing for dads. Last summer, when Bodhi took swimming lessons at the same place Charlotte had, neither Brad nor I could go, so his babysitter took him. Well, Bodhi freaked out. He had a terrible meltdown. His babysitter didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. Bodhi is a very old soul; he doesn’t fuss without a reason. I had a whole week of work. But Brad was able to go the next day, and he did a masterful job of being there for his son. I felt stabbed in the heart. So how do you handle working-mom guilt such as this? I am tortured. A little less now that I have two kids. It was so hard to leave Charlotte and go to work. But now she and Bodhi are good friends. And once they’re in school, I know where they are for five or six hours. I used to have a terrible time on Judging Amy when there were delays beyond my control. They would say, “We hope to get you out by 5:30 p.m.” And then, the delays. My throat would close up with anxiety. I’d worry: Am I going to get out in time? Will I see Charlotte before she goes to bed? When that didn’t happen, I’d be able to relax once I knew she was sleeping. I’m a mess. There’s a woman I know with a 1-year-old boy. She planned a three-week vacation with her husband—without the baby! I was like, What? She’s so mentally healthy. I still couldn’t do that. Have you considered not working? There are days I tell myself I should quit and never work again. I think I still have a stress disorder from working so hard on Judging Amy. Then I had the gift of good timing to not work and enjoy my new baby. And I wondered, if left to my own devices, whether I would want to work again. But when Bodhi was about 2, I began feeling like I wanted to be out there with grown-ups. And it’s a gift of my wacky profession that I could take two years off and then go back to work. My sister-in-law, a high-level money manager, couldn’t take a year off. You’ve talked openly about trying Botox, discovering it wasn’t for you and finding collagen a more comfortable alternative. I guess because I haven’t had a facelift or a boob job or something dramatic, I can talk about it. I’m not really into it. I tried it. Dabbled. But talking openly about trying things is part of my style. I wrote a theater piece all about appearance and reality. There’s a big difference between the way things appear and really are. I always mention that we have a great nanny for Bodhi and Charlotte. Of course Brad and I need help—we both work. But our nanny is never mentioned in articles about me, so there could be an illusion that I’m doing it all. Of course I’m not! I’m on set for ten hours. Would my kids have been content to play with a rattle for those ten hours?