Michelle Williams said there are "no limits and no rules" in Hollywood.

The 'Blue Valentine' actress - who sought legal emancipation from her parents at 15 to make it easier to embark on an acting career - thought it would be easy to go off the rails if she didn't impose restrictions on herself when she was first starting out.

She said: "There were no limits, no rules. I made mistakes and tried to implement my own safety rules.

"I thought of it like those partitions you have at bowling alleys - the stuff I will do, the stuff that I won't do. Although I still veered crazily across the lanes, I didn't fall in the gutter."

The 30-year-old actress - who has five-year-old daughter Matilda with her former fiance, the late Heath Ledger - found Los Angeles life didn't suit her, and she was glad when she landed her breakthrough role in TV show 'Dawson's Creek' in 1997 and could move to North Carolina.

She admitted: "I kind of slugged my way through, but I didn't enjoy life in Los Angeles. In North Carolina you could crawl into a shell like a snail and not come out. It was quite a contrast."