Kathryn Morris has made movies with Tom Cruise (Minority Report) and Ben Affleck (Paycheck), but her private costar is a civilian, financial advisor Randy Hamilton. At 37, the Cincinnati-born actress, who spent much of her youth traveling with her family in a gospel-singing group, is settling down. “The one thing I’ve learned is that no one under 30 has any business getting married,” she says. The things “those little old ladies at the beauty shop” told her about lasting romance when she was young are true, too: “You have to want the same things, be good friends, and love and respect each other. An aunt of mine once said, ‘Well, you know, the sex stuff goes away. Don’t worry about that. It’s really about companionship, deep respect, and who’s gonna be with you through the tough stuff and still be able to laugh with you.’”

As Morris built an acting career that included a brief stint as the villainous-yet-vulnerable Najara on Xena: Warrior Princess, she found she intimidated some men. “I was always very driven and clear about who I was and where I was going,” she recalls. “In my early to mid-twenties, that was tough. There were times when I outgrew somebody.” And she believes that part of her generation’s gender struggle is in the timing: “Men in our generation are going through this period where they are in their late thirties and they think that their whole life is over: ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna have to just settle down with a supermodel.’ Suddenly they become Picket-Fence Guy, just like that.

“All my buddies tell me it’s not about the right woman, it’s about the right timing. I think it can be both. Men think that their lives are over [when they get married], but women are pretty fantastic right now. They’re not asking to be taken care of. They’re pretty independent.” With her show taking off, and with Hamilton (“I grew up with aluminum siding on my house; he grew up with aluminum siding on his house”) to come home to, Morris’s biggest challenge may be one a lot of independent women can relate to: simply finding the time to get married.

Kathryn Morris