NEW YORK—The career of Rashida Jones doesn’t look much different than that of many young actors. It started with small roles in television when she was in her early 20s and then gained some steam when she entered her 30s. Two years ago, she landed a job playing Karen Filippelli, the girlfriend of Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) in NBC’s The Office. After 25 episodes, her character was written out in order for the producers to develop another story line for Krasinski’s character. However, they remembered her when they were looking for someone to costar with Amy Poehler in the series Parks and Recreation.

At about the same time, she was hired to play the female lead in I Love You, Man, in which her character orders her fiancé (Paul Rudd) to find male friends; the film opens on March 20. Unlike some Hollywood brats, Jones’s success has been accomplished without any help from Mom and Dad. That would be The Mod Squad’s Peggy Lipton and music icon Quincy Jones.

“I had a very sheltered, loving childhood,” she says in a New York hotel room. “Very normal, all things considered. But times were different. You look at young girls now and they know what a Chanel bag looks like. I lived in Los Angeles, but my friends and I didn’t really have that kind of life. We weren’t handed credit cards. My parents didn’t raise me like that. The value system was not ”˜Who do you know?’ and ”˜Who are you related to?’ I know that my chances of being normal weren’t great, but, again, my parents were different. It’s funny, because I have this weird jealousy of people in the business who have escaped from a small town. At some point they said, ”˜I am going to make it and I am going to be someone and I am going to go from nowhere to somewhere.’ They got their drive and ambition from that. I had a little envy of them, but that approach was never an option.”

Jones admits that she made a conscious effort to make it on her own but says that her parents, who divorced when she was 14, after 16 years of marriage, never pushed her in any direction. She also says that her recent success has yielded at least one personal benefit that is particularly rewarding.

“In my 20s I thought, ”˜I want to work hard and get success for myself,’ but they always supported that, too, because they wanted me to be my own person. They wanted me to work hard because they knew that it was the only way I was going to feel the benefit of my own success. Now it is nice because the tables have turned and they can be proud of the things I have done. The biggest thing is that my dad is shining proud of me all the time. He talks about me to strangers. It is kind of embarrassing, but it is also really sweet.”