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ML EXCLUSIVE! Erika Christensenarrives at the Intelligentsia Coffee Bar, in the neighborhood of Silver Lake in Los Angeles, on her bicycle. Fresh faced, her tousled blond hair is pulled up and she is styled in a light blue button-down with its sleeves rolled up, white shorts and chic toffee-hued Tory Burch sandals. Looking very All-American and as if she just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad, the look is quite fitting as it is 4th of July weekend. She grabs a cool beverage and a to-go treat and we settle onto one of the blue wood benches out front. This fall, Erika reprises her role as Julia Braverman-Graham on NBC's hit comedy-drama Parenthood —in its third season. "At the end of the second season, I was thinking, If this is what it feels like to do two seasons, then sign me up for the duration. I'm in. It still feels like we're just getting started… It's a really good show, so yay!" Erika says enthusiastically. The role of Julia (wife-mother-lawyer) is a more mature role than Erika has taken in the past and one that she's adapted nicely to. For those who are not familiar with the character, Erika explains, "What you're seeing of Julia is her coming to the realization that she's not as good at the home life as she is at her job. She's not necessarily the greatest mother —and then her trying to resolve that..." Erika mentions that her girlfriends, who are mothers, have given their seal of approval on her getting the mom role right, which she is elated about. Playing Julia seems to have also given Erica some insight and appreciation for parenthood. "Sam Jaeger, who plays my husband (Joel) on the show, is a father. He's a really good, patient father, and he plays a really, good patient father on the show as well. I intend to have children too," she adds. Audiences have watched Erika develop into a beautiful woman over the span of her career onscreen, so it's only natural for her tastes in characters she's interested in portraying to grow as she does. In addition to her seeking more "grown-up roles," she hopes to explore different genres: comedy, action, and period-piece-type movie roles in the future. Costner), Flightplan (Jodie Foster), The Banger Sisters (Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn) – making it even more apparent that Erika could hold her own among the most revered thespians in the business. For Erika, film and TV present her with two very different and enticing worlds. The thoughtful actress explains, "Movies, they're kind of a sprint. If I was working on a job out of town, I'd just turn off my phone ignore everybody and disappear for those months. Whereas on a show, it's part of your daily life, you have to still engage with the rest of your life. You can't sit out forever, so that's a really interesting difference there. I like that's it's really integrated into your overall life. It's a long-term commitment, I like that." Erika temporarily stepped away from films while shooting the first couple of seasons of Parenthood, now she's ready to get back into them. "I just got hungry again. I actually really like auditioning, so I've been auditioning, meeting people, reading scripts. It's all really good fun. Because we're going back to work soon on the show, I have a feeling I'm going to end up having to juggle two at a time, doing TV and a movie." Acting is in her blood. It's never long before she's looking for the right role. Her attraction to acting rests in her inquisitive nature. Portraying FALL TV "I'm looking forward to watching Elijah Wood's new show, Wilfred. That looks super unique and cool. There are some great NBC shows I'm looking forward to… Smash, it's about Broadway. It's a musical --Anjelica Huston is in it. I saw her and was like, 'You're on my network!' That's all I said. I was so proud. Yes! Those are two I'm really looking forward to seeing." another person allows the opportunity to experience a multitude of lives through acting. "It's really kind of a wild and fascinating thing. It's kind of profound. You have to allow yourself to live somebody else's life for a period of time. You learn a lot from these characters or you can. I have three brothers in real life, but in The Upside of Anger, I had three sisters and it's a totally different dynamic. I got to explore that a bit. I just did one episode of SVU, where I played an FBI agent and it's such a strange kind of shift in the way you're perceived to walk around with a gun on your hip —little insights into things like that," she passionately explains. Erika has been able to dabble in the minds of unique characters over the course of her career, is there a favorite thus far? "There are a number of them I In entertainment since she was 12-years-old, Erika's career gathered force at whirlwind speed. Erika tells me that she went to her mother and told her that she needed an agent. Some parents might dismiss such a request, but her mother took it seriously and secured one for her. Within a few weeks Erika was getting a taste of stardom. "I found out much later, that my parents had discussed it and decided they would give me a trial period, I guess it was six weeks, to see how I did. In six weeks, I got three national commercials and was making more money than they were…" She makes sure to note that all of this was made possible with her mother's dedication to driving her to auditions and handling the logistics of it all. From national commercials, to appearing in the late Michael Jackson's music video "Childhood" ("I never got to meet him, but he sent me an autographed picture, so that was cool," she says), to her breakthrough performance as Michael Douglas' onscreen heroin-addicted daughter Caroline Wakefield in Traffic, Erika steadily established herself as a serious actress and was in the works of building an impressive resumé. Several film roles, with major heavy hitters, followed: The Upside of Anger (Kevin really liked… Oh, boy, ya know what? I have a good reason for this, I'm not being lazy. I like Julia, because her energy is so different from anyone I've ever played and so different from me. Most of the other the characters I've played have some hint of me sneaking through. I'm very live-and-let-live…" she says, gesturing with her hands animatedly, "I'm pretty mellow and she is not. She is really controlling and very uptight. She makes me laugh when I read the script and I think that's really cool to experience someone so different from myself..." Erika's high-energy is endearing and infectious. Describing herself as a "barefoot-in-the-park-kind-of-a-person," Erika tells me about a hobby she has wholeheartedly embraced within the last year —cycling. "It's like a whole new identity how I'm a cyclist. That's big now!" says the wide-eyed actress. Cycling since September of last year, she has gotten involved with a group of "knowledgeable and dedicated" riders, who ride everyday. "The first ride I did was 43 miles. It was just like, 'Ok, here we go!' I didn't really know that it was possible to do what we do. You just have to forget that and go with the flow —anything is possible!" she emotes positively. Covering miles upon miles at a time, Erika is reveling in her "new found freedom." The effervescent cyclist says that she MIAMI LIVING 59