Actress Rachel Boston didn’t spend 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, but she did flee to the wasteland to nurse a broken heart. In a recent interview, dressed in a bright red dress with ruffles on the sleeves, you’d never know she ever suffered a dark day.

Part of that spirit comes from her background. She grew up on what she calls “the mountain” in Tennessee in a tight-knit family. Her grandparents were wed for 56 years; her parents married for a lifetime. An uncle, from the only divorce in the family, still attends Thanksgiving dinner.

While it might not be “Hollywood,” that lifestyle lends itself to the roles she longs to play. On New Year’s Day she’s starring in one of them on the Hallmark Channel. “A Rose for Christmas” is the story of a young woman who, at the last minute, inherits the taxing job of building a float for the Rose Parade. Her task is complicated when the demanding overseer of the project interferes.

The star of “Witches of East End,” “American Dreams” and “500 Days of Summer” says she understood her family’s esprit de corps when she was only 7.

“My dad built the house we grew up in and ... we moved in before the walls had gone in. We moved in without hot water. And my parents turned it into this big adventure,” she says over a vegan lunch.

“It showed me different ways of life. We had lived in a really sweet small house. Then my baby brother was born and my dad decided he wanted to build a house. I think that shaped me in understanding the work that goes into, first of all, providing food and shelter and clothes for us, for our family, but also I started to understand that a lot of people didn’t have hot water, like that’s a luxury.

“Something in my mind shifted, and I became hyper aware of what goes on around us that maybe I hadn’t been exposed to. I think that shaped my vision of wanting to help other people too. A lot of kids didn’t have what we had. And we’re all connected. And that was something I remember so vividly.”

Boston was 17 when she packed up and moved to New York to try her luck as an actress. She wasn’t afraid, she says, though she really had no connections. “I was definitely making it with just my own two feet and a lot of hope and dreams and willpower,” she says.

“That independence and knowing I was OK in a city where I didn’t know anyone, I would be all right in this world. It helped me develop that confidence.”

Two years later she shifted to Los Angeles to make a film. “I had moved into this little cabin in Laurel Canyon and the owner told me that Rita Moreno used to live there. So I started reading all these books on her because I was curious, and I loved this house. It was such a sweet place, and I’d go on long walks, come home and read books on Rita.”

Soon she was cast in another show called “Gift of Miracles” which co-starred none other than Rita Moreno.

“It’s about miracles, and Rita Moreno is going to be in it! I couldn’t believe it because I’d lived in her house. So she showed up on the set … The whole movie was about people who come into your life and have connections. So here I was living in the same house while she was working through the early stages of her career, and there we were together making a miracle movie. It was God-winked beyond belief,” she says.

Boston, 34, admits that harboring such old-fashioned values in show biz can be a detriment. “Often in our world kindness and openness can be confused for weakness in certain areas, and I think having been in this field, I wouldn’t have survived it if I weren’t really, really strong. So trying to find ways to keep true to my core and my values and what I believe in and also stay in this industry, that’s been something that’s really strengthened me as a woman.”

As to her time in the desert, she says, “That put me on a path of wanting to tell stories of diving deeper into truth of who you really are and why you’re here, and also making films that make people happy, that bring some light to this world. I think that’s what we need more than anything. It’s what I needed at that time, and I think I found a place where I was able to connect with people who want to do good. What has someone gone through in their life and how do they use it to make the world a better place? Those are the stories I’m interested in hearing about now. I want to see them. I want to make them. I want to read about them.”

CLASSIC GAME SHOW REVIVED ON ABC

You think you can tell a guy who has survived a bear attack? How about the man who invented the language spoken on “Game of Thrones” — does he look like a linguistics professor? Identifying a sumo wrestler should be easy. But for the revived game show “To Tell the Truth,” it may not be so simple. The popular show of the past will be back on ABC Sunday with a celebrity panel and three contestants, each of whom maintains they are the same person. The panel has to guess who’s telling the truth. It’s fun to match your wits with the experts.

AD MEN REVEALED ON DOCUMENTARY

We don’t think about it much, but advertising, especially television advertising, has become part of our culture. Who doesn’t want to know where the beef is or where Flo will show up next or what comes between Brooke Shields and her jeans? The Smithsonian Channel will offer a look at the magicians on Madison Avenue who make us care. “The Real Mad Men of Advertising: the 1950s” premieres on Jan. 8. The show will include Matthew Weiner, who created the fictional “Mad Men,” and Shields, who at 16, presented one of the most controversial ads in TV history when she hawked Calvin Klein jeans.