Katey Sagal Happy at Last

After a Traumatic Childhood, Years of Addiction and the Devastating Loss of a Daughter, the Former Married . . . With Children Star Is on an Even Keel—and Savoring Every Moment

- Patrick Gomez

Katey Sagal is no stranger to leaps of faith. After spending her 20s trying to be a rock star, she switched gears and found both stardom (11 seasons on Married ... with Children) and accolades (she won a Golden Globe in 2011 for playing tough-as-nails mom Gemma in the biker drama Sons of Anarchy). But sitting at her Los Angeles kitchen table on a recent Tuesday morning, Sagal is nervous. “I wrote a book! And now people are going to read it! That scares me,” says the actress, 63, who still can’t believe that the memories she jotted down to share with her kids morphed into a memoir, Grace Notes. “My life has been a series of getting afraid of something, doing it anyway and surviving,” she muses. “My therapist says I take a lot of risks for someone who’s so scared.”