This afternoon, Nia Vardalos came in to Canadian Living headquarters. We chatted, we cooked, we ate, we laughed. The Greek-Canadian actress is every bit as friendly and funny as she is in her movies and she had us in stitches the whole time. But we didn't want to steal Nia all to ourselves. We asked you for your questions for Nia, so that you could learn everything you wanted to know about the actress, writer and mom. See her answers below, and check back tomorrow for more from our interview with her. What's your secret to having a good work-life balance? My writing office is off-site and I think that is really important, but I still have to work at home . I have conference calls really late sometimes. What I love about the conference call is you don’t have to be there, so I can just be in my pajamas. I have a little area in my house where I have a treadmill and I put a little desk in there. That’s my second office. So keeping it separate is important; I don’t think it’s completely possible, but we can hope for it. If we’re on a playdate, for example, I put my phone away. You just try. You constantly try. What’s it like kissing John Corbett? He’s such a doll. I can’t even tell you. It’s wasted on me, because I’m happily married, but he is the greatest. He really is. When I was directing him in I Hate Valentine’s Day, we would be rehearsing and I would take his lines and rewrite them, and he just takes it and says “Ok baby” and walks away to learn them. I just love him. He’s such a good person. Where do you get inspiration for your writing? I always swipe from my real life. My inspiration for I Hate Valentine’s Day was that I was a florist at one point. I used to see the pressure on people to be romantic. The one I’m writing now, Leftovers, for Paramount is inspired by the fact that, though Ian and I are a couple, a lot of our friends are individuals, and they hate the word “single.” They were like, “Why am I ‘single’? People don’t refer to you as ‘couple.’” So I’m writing an anti-romantic comedy based on the way they feel. Do you have any advice for an aspiring comedian? My advice is to get out there and do it. Because someone recently asked me about stand-up comedy and they hadn’t even been in a stand-up club. And I thought, You've got to go. You’ve got to go and appreciate it. It’s such a cliché, but you learn more from the misfires than you do from success. And success makes you more of who you already are, so you have to make sure you know who you are when it happens. What’s your favourite recipe that your mom used to make? Definitely her moussaka. Every Greek will clutch their hearts for this, but she made it vegetarian style. It’s so tasty and it’s lighter—good for the summer. It’s zucchini on the bottom (you can even put potatoes on the bottom), eggplant and then the béchamel sauce on top. It’s really good, but every Greek was like: "No meat?"