For a long time, people told Jaime Pressly she was too pretty and sexy to be funny.
Now, after making herself a household name as the self-obsessed trailer park queen Joy Turner on My Name Is Earl, some people think she's too funny to do anything else.
But if she had to be typecast, Pressly said, at least it was good to be typecast as a comedienne.
"Comedy is my first love," she said."
I'm not someone who can portray depressed and down characters all day.
I prefer to laugh while doing my job, and to make other people laugh.
"That's why Earl is a dream job. Great therapy.
"It's hard to stay upset when you're doing it."
The Emmy-winning actress (31) says that comedy is in her blood.
"I come from a very funny family," she said."
"And I believe humour is genetic. Comedic timing is a bit like rhythm.
"You either have it or you don't.
"Growing up, I was the comic relief for my girlfriends."
Pressly's girlhood passion was for gymnastics.
Later, she became a teen model and, after that, an actress.
She landed lots of small roles in movies and on TV, often playing a sex bomb.
Her gymnastic background came in handy when she made the video game-inspired martial arts film DOA: Dead or Alive, in which she cracked heads while wearing a bikini top fashioned from an American flag.
"I did DOA a couple of years before we started Earl," she said.
"All of us who worked on it did it because we wanted to work with Corey Yuen, who is one of the great fight choreographers.
"But it wasn't an easy shoot.
"We were in China for four months in some rough conditions, and a lot of things got lost in translation.
"I wasn't real happy with the final results . . . making a little film for kids is not what I had in mind."
Back home she still was frustrated at not getting the comedy roles she yearned for.
"Nobody told me I couldn't be funny. They just wouldn't give me a chance.
"If not for Greg Garcia, the creator of Earl, I'd still be fighting that battle.
"Greg saw something in me that everybody else overlooked."
It was inspired casting.
Playing Joy, Pressly is so convincing as a blonde bombshell of a Southern-fried harridan that she takes pains to assure new acquaintances that it's all for show.
There's a trace of a Southern accent in her normal speaking voice, but nothing like the grits-and-spit diction she employs as Joy.
"I was born in the South - North Carolina - but my people weren't at all like Earl and that bunch on the show," she said."
We were a middle class family.
My mum's a teacher, my dad's a car salesman.
The house had three bedrooms and three baths.
I've never lived in a mobile home.
"I don't think I'm at all like Joy.
"But I will say this . . . all Southern women have something in common. They share a survivor's instinct.
"They'll get through. It's just that Joy will stomp on anyone to get there."
- AP The fourth season of My Name Is Earl premieres on Monday at 8pm on C4.
