Now ... not so much.
Williams, who plays a psychologist on Lie to Me, has been in show business most of her life, mostly because she was born into it.
Her mother is actress Shannon Wilcox, and Williams remembers observing the anxious flurry associated with acting.
"I grew up around her going on auditions - I'd run her lines with her and memorise them and come back, and I was always very curious about it," she says.
"I would go to sets and visit and just hang out and watch how movies and TV shows are made.
"I always loved how everybody got together to create this one thing," she says.
And while Williams doesn't seem to be your traditional showbiz sprout, her plastic-surgeon father has been married six times (her mother was his third wife) and she characterises him as "traditional".
Her mum, on the other hand, was more of a free spirit.
"My mother grew up on a farm in Indiana and moved here and wanted to bring a little bit of the farm here.
"So I had a pet goat [and] 40 rabbits," she says.
"I grew wheat grass and I would sell batches of it to cancer patients, because it helped with the side effects of chemo[therapy].
"So... I took a little bit from both of them; it was a fun childhood," Williams says.
She tried acting early on, but didn't like it.
"I went to a French school, the Lycee [in Los Angeles], and I remember going to a couple of auditions where you go into this dark building and you're waiting and waiting, and it seemed so strange.
"It's not what I wanted; I wanted to be playing and hang out with my friends - I wanted to wait till I was 18 and could do it on my own."
And she did - her decision corresponding with the writers' strike of 1988.
"It took me a couple of months to get my first job, and I've been working ever since," says Williams, who is demure in a grey dress printed with tiny white flowers.
"There were a couple of times that were slower, but I've been really lucky."
Most people remember her from her six years as Lindsay Dole on The Practice, but she has also co-starred in Men in Trees, and appeared on countless TV shows.
Williams, who speaks French, because of the Lycee, and Spanish, because of a particular nanny she had growing up, is married to Canadian-born writer Ajay Sahgal, with whom she has three children.
The actress, who is slightly embarrassed that she grew up in such a glamourised environment, says she thinks motherhood has changed her values.
"It's an amazing thing to be selfless, to take care of someone, and they teach you how to become parents.
"It puts everything into really good perspective, especially in this business, [which] can be really heady sometimes, and there's a lot of ego and a lot of insecurity that is always brewing.
"Children are great equalisers in the sense that how normal your life can be."
- The second season of Lie To Me premieres Wednesday, 8.30pm on TV3.
