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" I knew I would be watching The Good Wife as soon as CBS began promoting the new drama last fall. They had me at the title: a good wife. Isn&amp;#039;t that what we all set out to be? Yet we all define the job description differently once we leave the white dress and veil behind. Inspired by the high-profile infidelities of political celebrities (Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, Mark Sanford, who&amp;#039;s next?), the show captures the wife&amp;#039;s perspective after her powerful husband&amp;#039;s bimbo eruption and fall. Julianna has earned an Emmy nomination for playing lead character Alicia Florrick, who has chosen to stand by her man, return to her career as a lawyer, and focus on her kids while trying to maintain her dignity. I felt a kinship with Alicia, though our circumstances were very different. My husband, the journalist Bob Woodruff, was seen as a hero, not a villain, when he was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq. But his nightmare rocked my world and thrust me into a public situation for which I was unprepared. Until the day Bob was injured, in January 2006, our family was in a good place. Bob had just been named the co-anchor of ABC News, and the future stretched out before us. A mother of four and a part-time freelance writer, I had cheerfully supported my husband&amp;#039;s career climb, even if it meant operating as a single parent for months at a time. I was satisfied with my life. One phone call changed all that. The person who had always reported the news became the headline, our family&amp;#039;s Christmas card picture displayed with each news story. After I absorbed the initial shock, my maternal instincts kicked in to comfort the children and develop a plan in case my husband never recovered. I spent a year as caregiver, helping Bob get back on his feet and regain his words. There were good and bad days, and I learned firsthand about life in the &amp;quot;after&amp;quot; part of a shock wave. The Good Wife is about the aftershock we hope never to experience. It&amp;#039;s a parlor game that surely every one of us has played: What do you do as a wife and mother when you&amp;#039;ve followed the rules and life throws in a grenade? What choices would you make if faced with a cheating husband? How far would you go to hold your marriage together? Those were just a few of the questions I was dying to parse with Julianna, who&amp;#039;s been married for almost three years to New York City lawyer Keith Lieberthal; the couple have a 2-year-old son, Kieran. She came to marriage late, at 41, after winning millions of fans, award nominations, and an Emmy as nurse Carol Hathaway on ER. Now she&amp;#039;s got another giant TV hit and a recent star turn in last spring&amp;#039;s independent film City Island. When I meet Julianna in a bustling restaurant in New York&amp;#039;s SoHo neighborhood, she is wearing a cropped navy jacket and pants, and nimbly navigates the tables in super high heels that would take down a clumsier woman (like, say, me). But there is very much a girlfriend quality to her, which is why it&amp;#039;s so easy for me to jump right into all the meaty topics that the show brings up, the ones my girlfriends and I have chewed over during many glasses of wine in the kitchen. Where does Julianna stand on temptation and keeping a marriage fresh, and what would she do if her husband cheated? Is she like Alicia? &amp;quot;Not at all,&amp;quot; answers the actress with a smile, after we&amp;#039;ve placed our orders with the waiter. &amp;quot;Alicia is very measured. She thinks before she speaks, and I am much more reactionary. I am playing a character who is the opposite of me, and that can be a real challenge sometimes. I would never, for example, give up my career for my husband as she has done. I&amp;#039;d find a way to make both my marriage and career work.&amp;quot; And with that, the conversation I&amp;#039;ve been looking forward to for days is off and running. Why do you think The Good Wife and your character have struck such a chord? Because as women, we are ultimately trained to put everyone else in front of ourselves, and we are called upon to play many roles. It&amp;#039;s in our DNA. And that&amp;#039;s what my character Alicia has done in a way. A good wife is someone who thinks she has done everything right: raising the kids, being there for the husband, being home, trying to do it all. Alicia was swept up in the life they led, and then she found out her husband was sleeping with someone else by reading it on a news ticker. What would you do in Alicia&amp;#039;s shoes? We all imagine what we would do in these moments \u2014 but do we really know for sure how we would respond? I wouldn&amp;#039;t be as poised. I watched the Spitzer thing on TV, and it made me so angry \u2014 I was riveted to Spitzer&amp;#039;s wife, and I thought, How dare you make her be there at that press conference! When my character is asked why she didn&amp;#039;t know about her husband&amp;#039;s cheating, her answer is simple. &amp;quot;I was unprepared.&amp;quot; She was just doing her job, her head was down. I was fascinated by the episode where Alicia shares an intense kiss with her superior at the law firm, who happens to be her old law-school boyfriend. She then flees and goes home and initiates sex with her husband. What did you think about that scene?  Alicia&amp;#039;s husband has cheated on her, she hasn&amp;#039;t been touched in nine months, and she essentially uses her husband as a tool to satisfy herself. It was a bold choice for the writers and the show to include that sex scene in an aggressive and dominant way not often seen on network TV. And it was fun to play it that way. So... are you a good wife? I love being my husband&amp;#039;s wife. I love being one half of a romantic couple. I am a big believer in women&amp;#039;s lib, but I love when a man holds a door for me. But a good wife? You&amp;#039;d have to ask my husband that question. Can you recall a time when you felt like a great wife? There was one perfect day recently when I got up at 5:30 with the baby, went to work at 6:30 for 12 hours, grocery shopped, cooked dinner, and then later, my husband and I made love. We both looked at each other that night and said, &amp;quot;This day will never happen again!&amp;quot; How did you two meet? I met him when I texted an agent friend. It was my friend&amp;#039;s birthday, and I&amp;#039;d remembered that because it was the same day as my grandfather&amp;#039;s birthday. This friend invited me to an impromptu party; I walked in, and there was my husband, sitting at a table. So we met totally by accident.  Did he know who you were? No, he didn&amp;#039;t have any idea, and I loved that. We were married two years later. You waited until after 40 to tie the knot. Was that part of your bigger life plan? Absolutely. I didn&amp;#039;t get married until later for a very specific reason: My parents were divorced and I never wanted to put a kid through that. I definitely met the right person, but I also think part of it is timing. I wouldn&amp;#039;t have been ready for the life I have now when I was 30. It&amp;#039;s easy to have the chocolate and poems in your life, the whirlwind romance. The hard part of life is being the person who shows up for the parent-teacher conference. You and Keith have been married for about three years. Can you ever imagine giving in to temptation down the road when the routine of marriage sets in?  I think that when you have gotten things out of your system, you are less tempted by distractions. My only temptations now are chocolate and martinis. I think the hardest thing about cheating would not be the physical act; it would be the trust you break. If you decide to take that person back, you have to make a deal to trust again. I&amp;#039;m very happy with where my life is, but for someone like Alicia, whose husband has jumped in bed with a sexpot, the temptation of being sexually desirable is huge. Sometimes we&amp;#039;re all forced to give up things that are important to us, for our families or our relationships. Where do you draw the line? The one area where I&amp;#039;m not willing to compromise is to be at a place where I can&amp;#039;t be truthful with family and friends. A friendship isn&amp;#039;t worth it to me if I can&amp;#039;t be honest. What would you do if you knew a friend&amp;#039;s husband was cheating? I would tell the husband that I know he is cheating and he needs to tell his wife. And if he won&amp;#039;t do it, I will. So why don&amp;#039;t more women have affairs? Why don&amp;#039;t we see more &amp;quot;Alicias&amp;quot; in the news as the cheaters? I actually get asked that question a lot. People think I&amp;#039;ve become some kind of expert on infidelity by playing Alicia. The answer is simple: We are tired! With all of the things we do in our lives, what woman has the time to fit in an affair? So having married someone who isn&amp;#039;t an actor, how do you make room for both of you with your professional life very much in the public eye? We include each other as much as possible in each other&amp;#039;s lives, and we both try to make sure that our own stuff isn&amp;#039;t more important. I never wanted to marry an actor, because he might take some of the things we actors have to do a little more seriously. My husband gets a kick out of the red-carpet antics and sees the humor and the fun in it. Did you always want to act? I actually never thought about it until I took a theater course when I was at Sarah Lawrence College and it opened my eyes to a whole new world. I auditioned for a David Rabe play, In the Boom Boom Room, and was smitten when I got the part. Did you wear white go-go boots? Yes \u2014 I loved them! But ER was my breakout role. I auditioned on a whim. When I got that part, my character was originally supposed to die. At one point George Clooney called me and said, &amp;quot;I think you are going to live.&amp;quot; And I was on the show for six seasons. Tell me a little bit about your background. I grew up the youngest of three daughters to parents of Austrian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Russian backgrounds. My dad was in advertising, and that took us to New York, London, and Paris as kids. My parents eventually divorced, and we girls moved back to the United States with my mother. It was my mom&amp;#039;s attitude that gave me my own outlook on life. I learned from her to look at the glass as half full. Even in the hardest situations, my mother would tell us, &amp;quot;If we can&amp;#039;t bear it, we&amp;#039;ll go home.&amp;quot; And the challenge of making it work became far more interesting than giving up and admitting defeat. What&amp;#039;s one thing no one ever told you about motherhood? How little sleep you get. What&amp;#039;s been one of your most satisfying moments as a mother? Hearing my son say, &amp;quot;I love you.&amp;quot; How did becoming a mom change you or your priorities?  Being a mother has made me more patient and more hyper-aware. I wasn&amp;#039;t someone who enjoyed being around lots of little kids before I had my son. But now I see the world through their eyes. I got some interesting offers to work during The Good Wife&amp;#039;s hiatus, but I wanted to spend the time with my family. Right now it&amp;#039;s about wanting to see my child every day and being 100-percent present when I&amp;#039;m with my family. What are you afraid of? Public speaking. I gave the graduation speech at Sarah Lawrence, my alma mater, this year, in front of 2,500 people, and I was totally out of my comfort zone. I love acting because I can slip on someone else&amp;#039;s shoes, but having it be me up there and my words \u2014 it was terrifying. What advice did you give them? Small gestures can have a big impact. If you walk down the street and smile at someone, that will get passed to the next person. That has the power to change someone&amp;#039;s day. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a6450/julianna-margulies-interview/>