RD: No, I told him it was over before he went. And then a confusion arose because the story came out that he went to the clinic and I abandoned him, when it simply wasn't true.

TVG: Are you on good terms?

RD: We are trying to find a place where we can both be the parents to the child, and our mutual love of and our respect for the child will be the basis for us to build whatever relationship we will have in the future.

TVG: Let's talk about Monday After the Miracle. When people think of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, they likely recall "The Miracle Worker" [the 1962 feature with Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft].

RD: Our story picks up after "The Miracle Worker" [when Helen is a student at Radcliffe College]. And it focuses on the amazing relationship between these two women. The intimacy and the love and the need that each had for the other. It is a curious and complex relationship.

TVG: What makes Annie a different challenge from playing Monica?

RD: I guess it was Annie's complexity that attracted me. She had moods. She had dreams. She had desires. She had a temper. I wasn't just playing a saint.

TVG: Do you think you have crossed a threshold now that you have achieved this level of fame? Do you feel secure in it?

RD: I'm just so aware that it is all so fleeting. And I have this great family that really keeps me grounded.

TVG: Did they help get you through this past year?

RD: When my sisters [Jacinta McLaughlin and Ann Flood] were here, they offered me emotional support. But when I was talking about being a working mother, they said, "You can't hold yourself up as some kind of poster girl for the working mother. You have people doing everything for you." [laughs]

TVG: You seem to have kept stardom in perspective.

RD: The bad stuff passes, but so does the good. This is my little window right here to enjoy it.