On a working day, I get up at five in the morning. I have a shower to get my brain functioning and then I drive to the studio for 14 hours of playtime. The pace is hectic; there's time for a quick rehearsal, I go into make-up while they're setting up the lights, then we do a couple of takes.

Often we're working late into the night just to keep on schedule, so during the winter months we don't see daylight. By January, I look like a ghost - a white face with black rings under my eyes. What they manage to achieve in the make-up trailer is nothing short of a miracle. Once filming is over, I drive downtown to my favourite Mexican restaurant, where they let me sit in a booth for three or four hours reading scripts and learning lines for the next day. After that, it's home and straight to bed. Work weeks are pretty uneventful.

On my days off, I try to do as little as possible. I sleep late, then if the sun's shining, I get to the nearest beach and spend the rest of the day swimming and reading. Later on, I might meet up with the gang for a meal or a drink. If I don't rest on my days off, I'm a wreck during the week.

We film Dawson's Creek from July to April, then I drive home to Vancouver. I love Vancouver. I can be with my family, I can reconnect with the guys I grew up with, and it will always be my home. I head straight for my mother's couch and say, 'Oh Mama, I'm so happy to be home. I'm just going to stay right here for the next two weeks.' But later I might head out to the local bar, because I know everyone will be there; you never need to make any calls. I go out to the movies with my mother and my little sister, who's 18, and we sit there with our popcorn and we hoot and holler along with everyone else.

Like the rest of the cast, I'm commited to another two years on Dawson's Creek, but it's important to build up a broad base of work outside the show if I'm going to carry on acting afterwards. This is the first year that all the characters are at college, so it's going to be tricky.

The central focus was always high school and adolescence; now that's been removed, there's no obvious tie to bing the characters together. I'm curious to see how it turns out, because someone's going to have to come up with a really good idea if we're not going to turn into a parody of ourselves.

In-between travelling and shooting Dawson's Creek, I've fitted in a few movie roles, which keeps me fresh and sane, but it's incredibly hard work.

Earlier this year, I worked for 58 days without a break, commuting between Wilmington and Austin, Texas, for a film. I kept going by mainlining multivitamins and ginseng, but as soon as the shooting was over I got 'flu. I guess that's nature's way of telling you you're doing something wrong."