Heather Graham has confessed she’s “glad” she didn’t have children — “80% of the time.”
The “Boogie Nights Star,” 55, reflected on her decision to avoid motherhood in an interview with The Guardian published Monday.
“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,” Graham revealed.
“I do think it’s awesome now that more women are expressing their desire to not have kids,” she continued.
“The culture says: ‘You need to have kids.’ But why? If you’re not being a people pleaser, what do you really want?”
Graham — who wrote, directed and starred in her latest movie, “Chosen Family” — admitted that she was a “people pleaser” almost all of her life and that it wasn’t until she was in her 40s that she began to shift her approach to life and relationships.
“I realized, no, actually I can just ask myself, ‘What do I want?’ and make myself happy,” the “Place of Bones” actress confessed.
Graham’s desire to overcome people-pleasing seems to have motivated her to cut off all ties with her parents and her sister (actress Aimee Graham) when she was in her mid-20s.
“I think I felt, as a younger person, that I couldn’t really set boundaries with them that they would respect, so I wanted to explore that in the movie,” she said of “Chosen Family.”
The “Austin Powers” star also shared that her parents prevented her from accepting a role in the 1988 dark teen comedy “Heathers” when she was 17.
“My parents vetoed it,” she revealed. Soon after, she moved out of her parents’ house.
“I kind of became my own person and discovered: ‘What do I like? What do I want when I’m not under this very judgmental, authoritarian, parental, patriarchal structure? What do I want to do? What do I think of this?’” the actress recalled.
“My father’s really religious, and they were, especially my father, very critical of everything I was doing. It didn’t feel like a healthy dynamic,” Graham explained.
“I stopped talking to them and, I have to say, that was a huge relief. I felt like, at that moment, my life opened up with a freedom. I didn’t need to please them.”
While Graham’s family has attempted to contact her over the years, she doesn’t desire to have a relationship with them.
“There was an effort made, but it was always very judgmental, like: ‘Let me give you the number of the priest and you can go to confession,’” Graham explained.
“I just think we’re really different. They have a lot of great qualities – it’s just not a healthy dynamic for me.”