The actress, who has a three-year-old daughter, Gracie, has moved to Hollywood after a period of travelling between London and Los Angeles.

Miss Friel, 32, who is starring in a new film, Land Of The Lost, said of life as a young mother: “I’d be a liar if I said it was easy.”

The actress carried on working after the birth of Gracie, whom she had with David Thewlis, 46, who plays Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter films.

Miss Friel told Closer magazine: “I think it’s very different nowadays for working mothers. Before, a woman could take two years off - a year for her pregnancy and then the first year, but I don’t think that’s possible for women in showbusiness or in any industry any more.

“You just have to keep going - keep looking forward. If you stop, you’re like, ‘Oh God, it’s too overwhelming’. And believe me, I’ve had my fair share of those moments.”

She said her most difficult time was going seven days without sleep when she was filming Goal! in Spain in 2005 when her daughter was just a baby.

“The ground was moving and I felt I was going to faint,” she said. “If you can get through that, you can get through anything. You get so over-tired.

“You want to be there for your child at night - and I was still breastfeeding, but then I’d get to the point where I couldn’t sleep when I did get to bed. It went on and on. Eventually, a doctor gave me a sleeping tablet and I slept for a weekend.”

Miss Friel is currently in London after her television show, Pushing Daisies, was discontinued.

The actress, 32, who has a three-year-old daughter named Gracie, said the show demonstrated “what a woman will do to protect her children”.

The stellar cast for the third BBC1 series also includes Bob Hoskins, Gavin and Stacey’s Ruth Jones and Timothy Spall.

The award-winning show, written by Jimmy McGovern - whose credits also include Brookside, The Lakes and Cracker - focuses on the lives of different residents who live in the same street in the north west of England.

Former Brookside actress turned Hollywood star Anna plays Dee, a mother-of-two who tries to scrape some cash together by working in a sauna in Bolton. One of her children is being badly bullied and she wants him to change schools, but moving house hikes up her mortgage and she is forced to subsidise her earnings from her day job in a DIY store.

Anna, whose partner David Thewlis has also appeared in the show, said she absolutely identifies with Dee’s drastic actions.

“I prize our own daughter… above everything else in the world. Having a child completely changes your perspective on everything. The drama demonstrates what a woman will do to protect her children, and I quite understand that feeling,” she said.

On meeting a real-life prostitute, the Pushing Daisies star said: “She taught me that when she’s at work she puts her mind into a different place.”

The show will go out in a peak time slot from July.

A host of A-list ladies have been tipped to take over from 1970s TV’s Wonder Woman Lynda Carter in Joss Whedon’s big screen remake, including Megan Fox, Eliza Dushku and even Beyonce Knowles.

However, Friel wants to make sure that she is considered too.

The ‘Land of The Lost’ star told People magazine that she has been a fan since she was a child: “Everyone wanted to be Wonder Woman. I had Wonder Woman pyjamas.”

But Dushku remains the favorite for the role, after Carter endorsed her: “Eliza would make a great Wonder Woman.”

Friel was in constant fits of laughter while filming their upcoming movie Land of the Lost thanks to the comedian’s crazy antics.

And she credits a hidden womanly strength with helping her get through their gut-busting scenes.

She says, “There are tricks. The first one is I bite the inside of my cheeks and suck in like Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham), or I pull in certain female buttons. That seems to do the trick. If you keep pulling them in and pulling them in you can’t laugh.”

And the actress has become so devoted to her new exercise, she’s found yet another benefit - the routine also helps her save on trips to the bathroom.

She explains, “You have to stop the same stream from your peeing. That’s your same muscle.”

The British actress — who was making a name for herself on the US small screen as resurrected Chuck — says if it weren’t for the industrial action her show would still be going strong and she would be riding high on a wave of fame.

“I think the writers’ strike had a lot to do with a lot of shows,” Anna says. “But Pushing Daisies was not your average show and it was just starting to pick up momentum. And then to take something off the air for a year and to have to re-find those viewers, was hard.”

Friel recently revealed how she turned down offers for three pilot shows in the States, as she didn’t want to get herself into another long term contract so soon after Daisies.

“I was incredibly honored and flattered this year because of Pushing Daisies,” she said.

“It’s really propelled my career in America and to be considered for anything is lovely.

“But I’ve just finished two years on Pushing Daisies and I’ve decided that to go and sign another six-year contract isn’t the right thing to do at the minute.

“So I’m going to wait. And I’ve got two nice movies that I’m going to do this year, so we”ll see.”