PASADENA, Calif. — At some time in our lives, most of us pretend to be something we’re not. Maybe we lie about our age or fib about our job or glorify our deeds.

In TV Land’s new series, “Younger,” actress Sutton Foster plays a woman convinced she’d do better if she just filed a few years off her birth date and joined a younger age group.

Foster, herself, has done that. But it wasn’t all in fun, as it is in the show which premieres Tuesday.

“After my divorce, I became someone I wasn’t,” she says, seated on the beige couch in a dimly lit hotel suite.

“Because how do you cope? How do you deal? I was acting out trying to overcome a difficult situation. ‘That didn’t work, so I’m going to try THIS.’ For two years it was crazy town,” she says.

“I became a different person during that time. What really calmed me down, I had one relationship after I got divorced that was substantial. Then that ended and I went, ‘Offfffff.’

She was starring in TV’s “Bunheads” at the time. She and her ex, actor Christian Borle, are still friends, and she’s happily remarried. “But I feel that was a very important time of my life,” says Foster, who’s wearing a maroon dress printed with black flowers.

“But it needed to end and needed to unravel me so I could rebuild myself in a new way. When that happened, I felt like my life had been turned upside down and dumped everywhere. And I had to put all the pieces back, but had an opportunity to rebuild in a new way.”

She’s rebuilt her life several times. When she was little, she was a warehouse of energy. “I was a bit of a spaz, and my mom put me in dance classes when I was 4, and I loved that, so it all sort of started there. Then I started doing local theater and it was like a place where I fit in, where I belonged, that made sense. I wasn’t really into sports. I wasn’t a huge brainiac in school, but theater and acting — it just was where I fit in,” she says.

“I was a theater geek. I wasn’t popular at all. I went through the awkwardest of awkwardest phases when I was 12 or 13 and I shot up to 5-foot-9 when I was 14, and eventually grew into my teeth. And I’m still working on it,” she laughs.

“When I started getting older in high school, theater became more popular, and I wasn’t as so much of a theater nerd. But I didn’t really care. It was really the only place that made sense to me.”

Her mom had been a beauty from a small town in North Carolina who longed to be a model. But her father had forbidden it. As a result, Foster says, she was encouraged by her mother to pursue performing until she was cast in the touring company of “Grease” on four days’ notice.

“At 19, I was traveling around the country in a national tour. I feel that life had helped me out there,” she says, crossing her legs.

Foster, 40, had always suffered from anxiety, so the life of a roving thespian wasn’t the easiest choice. “I used to struggle with anxiety,” she nods. “I used to be afraid of flying and driving and social situations. But I’m better with that. I still sort of deal with it. It’s in my family. If I had to change anything, I wish I were more of a social butterfly. My husband’s really great about asking people questions. He’s incredibly gracious and very interested. I think I tend to be a bit of a wallflower and wait for someone to come to me. It usually takes me a little bit.”

She met writer Ted Griffin on a blind date. “It worked because I didn’t care. I was completely happy and content and wasn’t looking. I thought, ‘Oh, he’s nice,’” she shrugs.

“Then he kept calling and was persistent, really sweet, and one thing led to another. I thought he was really handsome and really nice when I first met him. And he was different from anyone I’d ever dated.”

Her mother, her most enthusiastic fan, didn’t live to witness Foster’s heady success. “My mom and I had a very complicated relationship which is a whole other story. The day she died, it changed my relationship with my father — my whole, my entire life. In many ways it was heartbreaking and one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through. And there have been some beautiful things that have come my way. It’s made me very appreciative of life and how precious and how finite it is. It made me appreciate everything more.”