Fans know her from her roles in "Star Trek" and "Orange Is the New Black." Now, actress Kate Mulgrew is inviting them to get to know about her life behind the camera -- a life filled with love, loss and a remarkable reunion with a daughter she had given up for adoption in her youth.

Mulgrew details these significant moments in her memoir "Born with Teeth."

In the sweeping book, the 60-year-old recounts various turning points in her life, including eight engagements, two marriages, the death of her sister, and her close relationship with her mother.

Mulgrew said the decision to share some of her painful memories was very deliberate and conscious.

"It was time," she told CTV's Canada AM. "My parents had died and I was ready. I wanted to recall vividly each pivotal incident in my life."

But it is the search for the biological daughter she gave up for adoption decades ago that shapes much of the book.

Mulgrew became pregnant when she was in her 20s, just as her career was starting to take off. She decided to give the girl, later named Danielle, up for adoption, and only saw her newborn for a brief moment before she was taken away.

The decision haunted Mulgrew, who eventually hired a private detective to help locate her. The actress eventually got word that her daughter had been found, and the two were reunited in a Boston-area hotel in 2001.

Mulgrew said she couldn't have written the book without her daughter's approval.

"I wouldn't have dreamed of doing it without that," she said. "She's a remarkable person. Had Danielle not lead with mercy, lead with grace, none of this would have been possible.

"She's extraordinary in her capacity to forgive, and in the depth of her compassion."

"Born with Teeth" also goes over other painful moments in Mulgrew's life, recounting how she survived after being raped at knifepoint in her youth, and how her sister died at a very young age.

The actress said she was able to move on from those tragedies, crediting her Irish Catholic upbringing, as well as her acting training which taught her to use life's painful experiences in her craft.

"It's resilience to go on, and I'm a survivor," she said. "I was blessed with that."

And as fans eagerly anticipate the third season of "Orange Is the New Black," Mulgrew said she too is hoping for many more seasons of the hit show.

She said landing the role of the inmate "Red" was a stroke of "unbelievable good luck."

"At 56 to get a role like that?" she said. "I can throw my vanity away, and I've suddenly been completely liberated.

"Red is complex. She's deep, she's textured, she's multi-layered and she's excellent and unexpected and I just adore playing her… going to work is blissful now for me. May it last another 10 years."