We’re barely one a month into the new year and it’s already shaping up to be Jennifer Love Hewitt’s best yet — she kicked off 2011 with a Best Actress Golden Globe nomination for her role in “The Client List,” could repeat at September’s Emmys, broke ratings records alongside Betty White in “The Lost Valentine” and might be engaged any day now to boyfriend Alex Beh.

So yea, she’s made pretty short work of the last 31 days.

To celebrate the DVD release of her Golden Globe nominated movie, I caught up with JLH to talk about the reaction from fans, from Hollywood and from her family!

PopWrap: First off, congrats on The Golden Globe nomination.
Jennifer Love Hewitt: Thank you! It was awesome, but I was totally shocked. I never pictured it getting me a Best Actress nomination – all my love to The HFPA. That was just one of those princess days – it was really great and I felt like a million bucks. We had so much fun.

PW: I’d imagine that acknowledgment like that really reinforced how this was more than your average Lifetime Movie.
Jennifer: I think so. When you’re working on something for four years and feel like it’s a passion project, you obviously feel proud but have no idea what other people are going to think.

PW: What kind of responses have you gotten?
Jennifer: People really had a good response to it and that makes me so happy. It was a tough story to tell because we wanted to do it right, delicately and give people eye candy while telling a real journey. The tricky thing was that the audience can essentially support her choices or not, and we really needed to get the audience to fall in love with her and care about her journey. Which I think we did.

PW: You had also told me that a big part of this role was hopefully changing people’s opinion of you in Hollywood — has that happened?
Jennifer: I think that following “Ghost Whisperer” with “The Client List” and that episode of “SVU” really showed people another side of me. Everyone has been so gracious and awesome in saying, “oh wow, there is something else there.” And as an actor, that’s all you can hope for. I’ve been here for a long time and so I’ve had to fight the curse of the child actor, the teen actor, the becoming an woman thing and now I’m just a grown up person. It’s a delicate transition and I’m grateful that people have been so gracious in letting me do that.

PW: What’s the key to making those transitions?
Jennifer: I always tried to think of ways to do it where it wouldn’t seem false. Some actors think, “I want to be a grown-up, so I have to find the raunchiest part I can where I take all my clothes off for them to think I’m a grown-up.” That’s really not the case. Grown-up’s don’t have to shout from the rooftops, “I’m a grown-up!” What I’ve tried to do is embrace every age and play the appropriate roles for those times.

PW: Was there a particular age where you felt the parts gelled with who you were the best?
Jennifer: Definitely a teenager. I was on “Party of Five,” which was a great drama, I was always crying and frustrated and angry, so it was great catharsis. My mom never had a troublesome kid because by the end of the day, I had gotten all my anger out on camera, which worked out really well for everyone [laughs]. But I also feel that I’m sort of back to that now. 32 is a good age, I am definitely ready for a family. I’m feeling more comfortable in my humanity and femininity and getting to play these characters who feel that way too.

PW: What’s next? Another book? You had mentioned Broadway perhaps.
Jennifer: All of those things. I want to find the right [Broadway] show, and I have a few book ideas in the works. I can’t decide if I want to do another romance oriented thing or something about women my age, which is such an interesting time. I don’t know what kind of book it’ll be, but it’s coming.

PW: And what about those Knockers Up t-shirts you promised me?
Jennifer: I know! I’m working on it, I swear. [laughs] I’m going to dedicate a few days to my Knockers Up t-shirt business.

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