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I did some commercials and a couple of B movies, then a few pilots that didn't go anywhere. Eventually I did the pilot for Beverly Hills, 90210. The rest is history.

I've done 10 or 11 pilots for network television, which is ridiculous.

There's this funny thing with pilots that you have to sign the contract to do the whole job before you're even offered the part. And they make about a million pilots a year, but hardly any of them get turned into series.

A pilot is like the most extensive dress rehearsal you can ever imagine, because the writers are learning about the actors, the actors are learning about the characters.

I've done a lot of pilots. A lot of shows. You're young and you do a job just because you know someone gave you a job.

Pilots are so hard because you have to introduce all these characters, you have to hook an audience, and an audience has such a smaller attention span than maybe they used to have.

As I slowly managed to take what I had learned into a transition from contestant to announcer and warm-up, I first had to prove myself on pilots. And as you know, many pilots are taped for each show that is lucky enough to breakthrough to being a series.

My husband was a pilot. He flew Elvis when Elvis first started making appearances around the country.

I never intended to become a professional pilot. But, as I became more curious about aircraft, and, well, not being John Travolta, I realized that the only way I was ever going to fly a jet is if I got a job.

When I first did a U.S. pilot season, there were very few British actors schlepping around town trying to get into television. That was 1999.