One year ago Chrissy Metz, costar of This Is Us, had 81 cents in the bank. She plans never to forget that.

As told to Alex Morris

I was born in Homestead, Florida. My parents divorced when I was eight; I never really knew my dad, and my mom raised my older sister and brother and me alone. It was challenging. There were times I’d be nervous walking home from elementary school, thinking, If that red tag from the power company saying our lights are turned off is on the door handle, I don’t know what I’ll do. And there were nights my mom wouldn’t eat dinner. She’d be like, “Oh, I’m not hungry.” I knew she was giving up food to make sure we could eat, but when you’re 9 or 10 years old, you can’t help. It was devastating. In retrospect I think that’s why food equals love in my family. It’s the way we showed love—my grandmother would make me a grilled cheese sandwich every time she’d pick me up from school. I really valued that attention. As I got older, that turned into, “Oh, I’m happy—let’s celebrate and eat. I’m sad? Let me eat my feelings.”

My mom eventually got remarried and had two more daughters; she and my stepdad did the best they could. I remember when my mom couldn’t afford to buy me Keds, my friend offered to glue her little blue label onto my Payless shoes! I can laugh about it now, but it was a big deal to me as a kid. Comedy soon became my outlet. I was always the class clown, and I think I gravitated toward performing for the attention I didn’t always think I was getting at home.

After high school I really wanted to act, but I didn’t even know how to begin. I didn’t know anybody with connections, I didn’t come from money, I didn’t go to Juilliard. But I never was afraid of the odds, even though they were seriously stacked against me.

Then my sister—who is skinny and tall and beautiful—heard about this open-call model and talent search at a tiny little Holi­day Inn in Gainesville, Florida, and she was like, “Will you take me?” So we went, and the woman asked me, “Do you sing or act? Just step in here for a second.” I sang Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”—Lord knows why I chose that big ol’ thing. The following day she called my sister for a modeling contract and told me she’d introduce me to managers and agents in Los Angeles.

And how’d we get to L.A.? Girl, some young women and I caravanned all the way from Florida, then lived in a two-bedroom apartment, three of us to each room, in Burbank. We were all on a budget—we spent nights playing Uno in our living room—but most of the other kids’ parents were footing their bills. My stepdad helped me with my car insurance, but I couldn’t ask him for anything more; they didn’t have anything extra. So I paid my own way by nannying or finding odd jobs. I had two auditions that pilot season, maybe. I cried a lot.

And then in 2014 American Horror Story came up. I’d wanted the role of Ima [Barbara] Wiggles desperately, and after I got it, I thought, OK, awesome, this is a jumping board for my career! But when it wrapped, there was…nothing. I almost moved back to Florida, but my mom said, “You can either be miserable here and not pursue your dreams, or you can be miserable in L.A. and at least pursue what you want.”