Holly Hunter was one tough kid

Anyone who has seen Holly Hunter's performance as the self-destructive Grace in TNT's "Saving Grace" should not be surprised that she grew up half tomboy and half Southern belle.

"I was very feminine when I was little, always loved to dress up, always loved to do female things," she says. "Then I went through a tremendously aggressive tomboy period where I was always ... running around and making my friends execute tests. We'd go through tests like: Can you jump over this ditch? Can you hop from one tree to another? These daredevil things. Then I got into boys.

"I broke into a couple of people's houses just to see if we could, just to see if we could break into people's houses, maybe even when they were in them, that was the worst thing we ever did. We never stole anything. We just wanted to see if we could trespass without being detected. We were never ever busted."

Hunter returns with "Grace" tonight, and the first season of the show arrives on DVD Tuesday.