Mary-Louise Parker discusses new memoir on men who influenced her life

Mary-Louise Parker from the Showtime series "Weeds" has won an Emmy, a Tony and two Golden Globes. She recently published a memoir about the men who influenced her life called "Dear Mr. You."

The biggest male influence on her life was her father, Parker told CBS News' Anthony Mason on "CBS This Morning: Saturday."

Parker described writing about her father as "almost like conjuring him in a sense. And like I got to have him back for a minute." He is depicted as a career military man who served in three wars, battled post-traumatic stress, but loved his family steadfastly.

The close bond Parker shared with her father is demonstrated her book when she writes, "Dear Daddy...To convey in any existing language how I miss you isn't possible. It would be like blue trying to describe the ocean."

Parker told Mason, "He gave me so much support and was so excited about my work and so understood it that I never really needed it from anyone else. It almost felt like when he died that I was, you know, on stage and the whole audience got up and left is what it felt like."

In "Dear Mr. You," Parker writes to a priest who answered her questions as a little girl and to the accountant who cleaned up her financial act.

When Parker first met the accountant, she had no understanding of her financial life, and she explained to Mason, "He had to explain to me that I was broke. Not only was I broke. I didn't know that I was broke, which is not that astonishing if you knew me at 23."

One letter in the book, "Dear Cerberus," is addressed to a three-headed monster of beastly ex-boyfriends. "You were the worst of those I called darling," she writes. "No one would believe how mean you were."

"It's something I don't fully understand about myself, like why I put up with that or why I allowed that or why even maybe sought that out. But writing it certainly helped me to understand it. And I am grateful for these experiences," Parker said.

Parker credits the bad dating experiences with allowing her to become unafraid of rejection and to be able to say, "You can never speak to me like that again."

Another letter titled "Dear Mr. Cab Driver" is an apology to the New York cabbie who threw her out of his taxi after she was rude to him during one of the lowest moments of her life. The cabbie actually told her, "I don't want you anymore," Parker writes.

"No one does," she writes. "I am pregnant and alone. It hurts to even breathe."

She does not mention that she'd just been abandoned by longtime boyfriend Billy Crudup, who left her for actress Claire Danes. Nowhere in the book does Parker name names.

"I just didn't want to write anything because of the subject matter that would seem like I was trying to elicit sympathy. Because I certainly don't want any. And like I say, I could be the bad guy in someone else's story," Parker said.

"Dear Doctor" goes out to the medical team that saved her life. While she was writing the book, Parker was rushed to the hospital one night when she began coughing up blood.

"And I went into septic shock when I was there. I asked one of the residents, 'Am I gonna make it?' And he said, 'You know, we're doing the very best we can.' And he didn't even have time to look at me," she said.

At that very moment, Parker said she was picturing her children.

"Just to picture it probably did something to my body chemistry somehow," she said. "I'm sure that it did you know."

"Dear Future Man Who Loves My Daughter" is an appeal to anyone who falls for her 9-year-old daughter, Ash. "Make her drunk on happy," she writes, with a warning if the future suitor doesn't.

"Yes. And I will come back from the grave and hurt you. It's true," Parker told Mason before she laughed and drove the point home, saying, "you may not hurt my daughter."

Parker said completing the book was painful because her father wasn't there to read it.

When the first copy of her book came in the mail, Parker said she didn't open the envelope it was in "'cause I thought, if he can't see it. I just didn't expect to feel that way."

Parker finally did open the envelope when a friend reminded her of how disappointed Parker's father would have been if she never opened her book.

Parker said, "I have an image of him -- if he were able to hold it. And it's almost as good. He's that clear to me. And that's a massive gift to your child, to think, like who am I to think I could write a book? Well, I'm, you know, that man's daughter 'cause he made me think I could do almost anything really."

"Dear Mr. You" is published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, a division of CBS.