It’s hard to imagine the crisp Alicia Florrick of The Good Wife or the unflappable Carol Hathaway of ER growing up the daughter of an eccentric mother who kept moving her back and forth across the Atlantic and bringing home boyfriends while her father – author of Alka Seltzer’s “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” jingle – worried from the sidelines.

But that was Julianna Margulies’ childhood, and, at a young age, she learned to cope by becoming an actress, her family’s “sunshine” girl, keeping everyone’s spirits high, no matter what she felt inside. Decades later, those early lessons in sublimating herself paid off – with three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe and eight screen Actor Guild Awards.

But in her unflinchingly candid new memoir, Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life, Margulies focuses less on the statuettes and stardom than on toxic relationships, a working mother’s guilt and the choices she made navigating a chaotic family and the seductions of life as a Hollywood star.

Ms. Margulies joins us to share those intimate stories and the lessons she’s discovered in her quest to make sense of the Sunshine Girl.

In conversation with Ali Wentworth, actor, comedian, author and producer.