It's been a while since we've seen Nia Vardalos, though for a period back around 2002, her face was unavoidable. After the writer and actress broke out big with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, she parlayed the success into a TV show-- My Big Fat Greek Life-- and a second movie, Connie and Carla, neither of which went anywhere.

So after spending five years living a "quiet life" after a writer, Vardalos decided to return to the screen with My Life in Ruins, a movie that she didn't write herself, but seems tailor made for her personality. Vardalos stars as an American woman living in her homeland of Greece, having abandoned a career as an academic for a frustrating life as a tour guide to endless groups of obnoxious and apathetic visitors.

Her life starts to turn around, though, with one special tour group, and a bus driver who, under that beard and tangle of hair, turns out to be a particular kind of Greek hunk. I talked to Vardalos back in April, just before My Life in Ruins screened as the closing film of the Tribeca Film Festival. She talked about how the movie's theme of regaining one's "kefi," or mojo, fit into her own life, and why this was the one project worth trading in for the bad breath and pajamas lifestyle of a writer. Check out our exclusive video interview below