#innerstyle

If your mirror could talk back to you, what would you program it to say? I don’t really give my mirror enough time, you know? It’s not about that for me really. Any time I leave my house, I never wear makeup. Any paparazzi picture you see me in, unless I’m coming out of an event, I’m not wearing makeup. I don’t do my hair, it’s usually up in a bun. And I’m in my workout clothes. So looking in the mirror is really not an everyday thing for me. My mirror would probably say, “You’re doing good.” That’s it.

How does your style reflect who you are? My style reflects who I am because I basically wear workout clothes every single day. I really feel that I live a very healthy lifestyle, so I always like to have workout clothes on because I’m very active. I get up at sometimes 4 in the morning, or I’m coming home at 4 AM from work, so I need to be in stuff that’s comfortable and I can wear while I’m rehearsing scenes or while I’m getting my hair and makeup done. That’s my day-to-day lifestyle.

What is your greatest invisible accessory? My father always told me just be happy, and growing up it would frustrate me because when I was a teenager I’d say, “You don’t know what I’m going through, Dad!” But that was just his constant advice growing up. There was always a lot of laughter in my house, and so for me, my invisible accessory would be that I always find a way to find humor, or to just find happiness in the moment. I know that might feel like the last thing you want to do sometimes, but I just keep that in my back pocket and that really does work.

On the days you’re not feeling awesome, how do you deal? Again, with acceptance of those feelings. I grew up with really amazing values and really incredible self-worth and self love. I want [my parents] to write down every single thing that they did so I can just copy it completely to my children. One of my favorite things that my mother does is, I could be feeling any way—sad or angry or whatever—and she just always let me be however I needed to be. Knowing that I could feel however I needed to feel made me feel better and made me feel better quicker. And I’ll also include that on those days, for whatever reason, my mother would always make me scrambled eggs with cheese and toast. There would definitely be some sort of reality TV situation and a nice bath in the evening.

What’s your biggest fear? The reality is that I’ve been through a lot in my life, and I definitely have a strength in me that I feel is pretty darn impenetrable. So my fears are just really psycho, gnarly, crazy fears that are so random. I know I could get pretty deep, but I feel like at the end of the day, there’s a lot that I can handle. Still, if you put me in water at night or in a car with more than four people, I definitely would freak out.

What lights you up from the inside out? Is it really bad that the first that comes to mind is food? [Laughs] I would honestly say it’s the combination of sitting and eating food with my family. That makes me so happy. Just being able to sit around a table, cook delicious food, and then eat it and laugh and drink wine. I’m Italian. I love pasta. I love cheese. I love red wine. I love bread. And 90 percent of my life is spent eating well and taking care of myself and that food generally makes me light up from the inside, but the foundation of that is my family and that Italian food. I could not be happier.