When Emmy Rossum was growing up, full of angst or agony or whatever emotion her teenage hormones decided on that day, she would calm herself down by visiting Cedar Hill. Located in Central Park near the 79th Street traverse, the field was near where she grew up on the Upper East Side. She would lay down on the gentle slope — which she recently described to Gothamist as “nature’s version of a La-Z-Boy” — and gaze up toward the trees.

“I feel emotional about hills and trees in a way that I feel self-conscious talking about because it can sound a little corny,” Rossum said. “But when I’m going through whatever I’m going through … I just remember how this tree has been here through 9/11, through the Second World War. Some of these trees have been here [for] hundreds of years. And that grounds me.”

Spending time outdoors helps Rossum clear her mind. As an actress, she often walks around the city while preparing for a project. She runs lines out loud. (“People do not care,” she noted of this practice. “They will assume you are on the phone or just crazy.”) For her latest role as an FBI agent in the Hulu crime drama “Furious,” Rossum tried to see if she could memorize the license plates that she walked by.

She says inhabiting the role was intense, given that her character is investigating a serial killer. But Rossum was heartened by the fact that the production shot on location in New York City; the studio was a short commute from her home. She returned to her usual comforts when she was no longer in character — playgrounds, the neighborhood coffee shop and more.

Rossum lived in Los Angeles for a decade, but it didn’t stick. She was adamant that she bring her two young children up in New York, the city that raised her. As “Furious” wraps its tense first season traversing the five boroughs, the actress shares some of her favorite places in the city with us.

Central Park’s Cedar Hill

Rossum and her husband, “Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail, live on the Upper East Side with their kids. When it snows, the family tries to beat the crowds and head out early to sled down Cedar Hill, the same place Rossum loved as a teen. “You get good speed on that hill,” she said.

“And then, of course, your hands are freezing and you’re looking for the nearest hot chocolate and it’s a snow day and everything’s closed,” she continued. “Or it’s $28 for a hot chocolate near there, and you’re annoyed, so you just go home and make hot chocolate.”

The Corner Bookstore

Rossum is a voracious reader. She reads all the time for work, whether to evaluate a script or look over something Esmail is working on, but pivots to novels in her free time. “I’ve always loved losing myself in a world,” she said.

The booksellers at Corner Bookstore, a longstanding independent shop at Madison Avenue and East 93rd Street, know Rossum’s specific literary tastes: “I really like going into this place and saying, ‘I’m looking for something and I want to feel this way. I want to laugh a little, I want it to be a little absurd and I like an antihero’s journey. What do you have?’” she said.

Sometimes she’ll skip the bookstore and head instead to the New York Society Library, the city’s oldest cultural institution (it was founded in the 1700s). She hopes they don’t hold the late notices over her children’s truant picture books against her.

Benches outside the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Rossum frequents the Cooper Hewitt, but not necessarily for the artistic achievements highlighted inside the Gilded Age-era mansion. Instead, she tends to swing by the free gardens for a quiet place to do Zoom therapy.

“It’s so peaceful and usually there’s a free bench,” she said, “I go and hope for the best.”

Butterfield Market, PlantShed Cafe

Butterfield Market has gone viral in recent months for its delectable frozen yogurt. But Rossum tends to visit for a caffeine kick. She’ll grab a cup of their iced hazelnut coffee and walk around the Central Park Reservoir with her longtime best friend, Dorie: “That’s our friend time where we catch up on all the hot goss of what’s going on in the group chat,” Rossum said.

If Rossum and her husband have plans to meet up with fellow New York couple Brittany and Christian Slater, who became good friends after Christian worked with Esmail on “Mr. Robot,” they might try Plantshed Cafe on the Upper West Side: “You feel like you’re in a flower shop while you’re having your coffee,” she said.

Billy Johnson Playground

Rossum and Esmail’s children — a five-year-old daughter and three-year-old son — dictate much of what they do with their free time. The actress is priming them to share her deep love of Central Park by taking them to the granite slides at the Billy Johnson Playground.

“You need a piece of cardboard because that gives you the traction to get down, so everyone’s fighting over these random scraps of cardboard,” Rossum said. “You have to ask a kid if you can borrow the cardboard. We’ll bring a cut-up Amazon box next time.”

Her Upper East Side home

When Rossum was a small child, maybe three or four years old, she used to spend time with an older couple who also lived in her family’s Upper East Side apartment building. “My mother could see their kitchen from our kitchen, so she would watch me run down the hall and … have my second dinner at their house,” Rossum said. She missed that sense of community in Los Angeles, where she lived on a more isolated property, and was pleased to find it again upon returning to the Upper East Side.

People tend to talk about New Yorkers being “really busy,” Rossum said, but she has never felt that get in the way of neighborly kindness.

“There is this feeling of connection, also, that we’re all in this together. We make this city happen.”