While Heather Graham feels confident in the choices she’s made over the last 55 years of her life, she often wonders what life would’ve been like had she taken a different path.
In a new interview, the “Austin Powers” star opens up about her conscious decision not to have children and admitted that she sometimes questions her choice.
“I think I’ve had moments where I wondered: what would it have been like if I had a kid? I guess I would say 80% of the time I feel glad I don’t have kids, and I feel free and really good about it, and maybe 20% of the time I wonder what would it be like. You just have to appreciate the life you have,” she told The Guardian.
ACTRESS HEATHER GRAHAM HASN’T SPOKEN TO ‘ESTRANGED’ PARENTS AFTER THEY WARNED HOLLYWOOD IS ‘EVIL’
“I do think it’s awesome now that more women are expressing their desire to not have kids,” the actress and director added. “Again, she says, it is almost people pleasing on a big scale. The culture says: ‘You need to have kids.’ But why? If you’re not being a people pleaser, what do you really want?”
This isn’t the first time Graham has expressed her feelings about not pursuing parenthood.
“I think we all have different paths,” she told People magazine in 2023. “You just have to embrace the one that you’re on. If, somehow, I had had kids, I’m sure that would’ve been cool. But at the moment, not having kids, I do feel free. And I get a lot of sleep. That is pretty great.”
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“I do feel like, as a woman, culturally, you’re not allowed to say, ‘I didn’t want to have kids.’ Because it’s like, ‘What’s wrong with you?'” she explained. “I think as a man it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, cool, you didn’t want to have kids.’ Now, women are getting more free to just make their own choices.”
These days, Graham – whose new movie “Chosen Family” premiered last year – said she’s learned the importance of dropping the “people-pleaser” label.
“I realized, no, actually I can just ask myself, ‘What do I want?’ and make myself happy,” she told The Guardian. “I wish I could have had this when I was 20 or 15. If I wasn’t trying to please other people, what would I have done? There were moments where I feel like I could have stood up for myself more,” she said.
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Graham, who has been estranged from her family for 30 years, said cutting ties with her parents and sister was a “huge relief.”
“It didn’t feel like a healthy dynamic. I stopped talking to them and, I have to say, that was a huge relief,” she told the outlet. “I felt like, at that moment, my life opened up with a freedom. I didn’t need to please them.”
“I feel like I wasn’t brought up to have a deep sense of self-esteem, and I think as I detached from my family, I built my own sense of self-esteem,” she added. “Sort of like a detective, I went through my past and looked at how I developed certain ways of thinking that weren’t the healthiest, and basically just went on a journey to be happier.”
“Before, I was more: ‘What do other people think?’” she said. “Now I’m just like, f— it.”
