Busy Philipps Knihy

From the time she was two and "aced out in her nudes" to explore the neighborhood (as her mom famously described her toddler jailbreak), Busy Philipps has always been headstrong, defiant, and determined not to miss out on all the fun. These qualities led her to leave Scottsdale, Arizona, at the age of nineteen to pursue her passion for acting in Hollywood. But chasing her dreams wasn't always easy and sometimes hurt more than a little. In this candid memoir, Busy opens up about chafing against a sexist system rife with on-set bullying and body shaming, being there when friends face shattering loss, enduring devastating personal and professional betrayals from those she loved best, and struggling with postpartum anxiety and the challenges of motherhood. But Busy also brings to the page her sly sense of humor and the unshakeable sense that disappointment shouldn't stand in her way -- even when she's knocked down both figuratively and literally (from a knee injury at her seventh-grade dance to a violent encounter on the set of Freaks and Geeks). The rough patches in her life are tempered by times of hilarity and joy: leveraging a flawless impression of Cher from Clueless into her first paid acting gig, helping reinvent a genre with cult classic Freaks and Geeks, becoming fast friends with Dawson's Creek castmate Michelle Williams, staging her own surprise wedding, conquering natural childbirth with the help of a Mad Men-themed hallucination, and more