KATIE LOWES

Everybody has parts of themselves that they're not 100% happy with - that's what makes you human. And being an actor, your job is to play human beings. Your job is to play real people.

I think it's just important to be always bouncing between TV and theater, and hopefully I'll get to do movies at some point.

To have an opportunity to get in front of a camera every single day is just priceless because it gets you closer and closer to being less self-consciousness in front of it and really being human and really making choices and standing by them.

'Scandal' has been, for me, the most consistent time I've ever logged in front of a camera. I grew up in the theater, and I feel very confident and comfortable on the stage and in front of a live audience, but the camera is a very different medium.

I went to NYU Tisch for undergrad, and it was amazing. My life then was extremely experimental with acting. I did crazy theater where we would be rolling around on the floor. I would be playing grandmothers, and clowns, and all this crazy stuff. Then I would be doing Shakespeare eight hours a day.

I look so fondly back on that time in my life when you first got an agent and you were in your mid-twenties and the world was your oyster.

I think that there is something truly beautiful in everybody you meet.

Acting is a growing tick muscle. I really believe that it's similar to being a musician in that the more you practice it in any capacity, as much as you practice doing it every day, the better you get.

If you can find a group of women, any age, who are supportive and kind and love you, that's the best. I have a group of girlfriends that I would lay in front of a bus for. They've picked me up through really, really bad times and I can definitely say I've done the same for them.

Kerry Washington is a mentor to me. She is so strong and smart. She's also so giving and supportive.

In high school, I had a couple girlfriends who had very extreme eating disorders. Anorexia and bulimia. And in college as well. It's just heartbreaking. As someone going through it, it's heartbreaking. And as a friend who's helping a friend going through it, it's heartbreaking. It's a real, real disease.

I love singing! I was a musical theater girl in high school. We were always singing and dancing around, and just doing little community theaters and high school musicals. Then, when I got to NYU, I focused more on drama.

I'm a New Yorker, so I speak really fast, naturally.

I think it's important to find humor anywhere you can. In real life, with the darkest, scariest, most intense moments, if you can find something funny, that's good.

A lot of times, I put my own personal health to the side, focusing on work or family or getting ahead. At the end of the day, you're just exhausted on your couch and haven't made that doctor's appointment, didn't make that phone call, and feel terrible.

I feel so honored to be a mom and get to do something that women have done for thousands of years.

I can't even remember anything before Albee. There is this bursting love you feel, but it's so intense and so all-consuming. I've become one of those psychopath mothers who loves looking at my kid and being with my kid, and then, when he takes a nap, I'm just looking at videos and pictures of him on my phone. I'm obnoxious.

For me, having a baby was never going to be timed randomly. I wanted to have mine while I was on 'Scandal.' Kerry Washington is one of my best friends, and I've gotten to watch her go through motherhood. I also have the greatest female boss in Shonda Rhimes, who is a mother of three and a huge advocate for women.

I got 'Scandal,' and that was, far and away, the biggest deal that had happened in my career. Simultaneously, the stress from planning my wedding and being in the public eye for the first time, combined with genetics - I got the diagnosis that I had psoriasis, and I was completely embarrassed and ashamed. I felt like a lesser person.

I am a type-A planner. That's just how I roll.

When I have any sort of diet that's high in sugar or yeast, I would find that my body would be very much out of whack.

This whole thing of motherhood is insane.

After having a real baby, I was sitting on a doughnut for a month.

I do Hatha yoga at Yogaworks three times a week and do two hikes a week.

It's just heaven to be a mom, and a working mom, and a pregnant person in Shondaland.