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There are a lot of good things happening to Eliza Dushku right now. She recently quit smoking. She stopped drinking, and she hasn't had a cup of coffee in the last year.

Another thing the actress almost gave up on, however, was Hollywood. But it took a little series created by Joss Whedon for Fox called "Dollhouse" to bring her back.

"I wanted to be a political science professor and to go to school in Boston," Dushku recently told USA Today. "I never wanted to be a big famous movie star and TV star. It kind of found me."

Following "Tru Calling," Dushku had been to the point where she was ready to move back to New England and take on a new career away from the cameras.

"I would have been fine and happy, and a little richer both financially and having had the experience I've had since I was 10 working with people like [Robert] DeNiro and [Arnold] Schwarzenegger," she said.

But Whedon invited her to lunch one day, and the two came up with the idea for "Dollhouse," and it seemed evident that Whedon and Dushku would continue a working relationship that started with her role as Faith on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and continued on with that show's spinoff, "Angel."

"I asked Joss to create it with me and for me, and it was really special to me," Dushku said. "I thought if I was going to get out of this business, I wanted to end on a strong note. I wanted to do something that I put my heart and hard work into full force. And this is it."

Part of Dushku's draw to the series was the lack of strong female characters in television. This is something that Whedon is known for, his mother having been a strong female character all on her own, he has said.

Dushku's own mother is a "hardcore liberal feminist. She's a professor in Boston, and she's been teaching women's studies for 30 years and international politics," she said. "I've traveled and I've heard so many women's stories, and I've heard stories of really, really hard lives. And I just feel there are so many stories to be told, and it's hard to find someone who can sort of intertwine them with the right kind of action and suspense, and use genius metaphors ... while striking a chord with the universal theme of the search for one's true identity."

"Dollhouse" airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.