Kate Mulgrew is seeing a career resurgence as Red with Orange is the New Black, but to millions she will always be Captain Katherine Janeway of the U.S.S. Voyager.

Kate Mulgrew is more than just the two roles she happens to be best known for. And now she is telling that story in a new memoir titled Born With Teeth.

Yes, Kate Mulgrew was indeed born with teeth

Determined to pursue her own no matter the cost, at 18 she left her small Midwestern town for New York, where, studying with the legendary Stella Adler, she learned the lesson that would define her as an actress: “Use it,” Adler told her. Whatever disappointment, pain, or anger life throws in your path, channel it into the work.

Kate Mulgrew’s career was just taking off when she became pregnant at age 22. She gave the baby up for adoption. Later in life, she would spend another 22 years looking for her daughter.

Finally, Kate Mulgrew got a phone call from Danielle, the daughter she had given up for adoption all those years before.

“Time stopped,” she told People Magazine. “I remembered the notes dancing in the first light of dawn in the Venetian blinds. There was this voice, unrecognizable, but I knew it was her.”

Mulgrew and Danielle did meet while she was filming her famous Star Trek series. Kate Mulgrew said she was so nervous talking to her daughter for the first time that she asked her a series of odd questions, just to keep her on the phone.

“I remember three questions came from her,” Damielle recalled. The first one was, ‘Are you pretty?’ And then the second one was, ‘Are you happy?’ And then the third one was, ‘Do you believe in God?’ That is Kate in a nutshell.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Kate Mulgrew explained. “I was just desperate to keep my daughter on the line, and the fact that I asked her if she was pretty – let alone if she believed in God – shows how out of it I was. I have no recollection of asking Danielle these questions and find it fascinating that Danielle remembers them so clearly.”