Patricia Clarkson on never marrying or having kids: Ive had a great sexy-ass life

Patricia Clarkson is so good at playing Northern WASPs, I always forget that she’s actually a Southerner. She’s from Louisiana, but she’s lived in New York for years. She apparently lives alone – she’s famously unmarried and childfree. She recently spoke to the Table for Two podcast about her personal choices to focus on her career and her fabulous single, childfree life. At the age of 63, she has no regrets. Goals.

She never wanted to be saddled with a husband or kids: She called herself a “single, straight Southern woman who never married and never had children” while explaining why she decided becoming a mom wasn’t right for her. “I have so many sisters who have beautiful children, and they now have beautiful children. I love being an aunt, I love it more than— probably more than acting, which is odd. They’re on par. But I’m telling you, these are gorgeous children, but that doesn’t have to define every woman. I made a big choice, but I knew it when I was young.”

She did have a chance: Clarkson noted that she considered the possibility of having kids and getting married “with this one artist I dated when I was like 38…I had a window to have a child, but [at] the end of the day I loved working, and I grew up with great parents who sacrificed everything for me. And you have to really be committed to having children. You have to be a great parent, and I was afraid I couldn’t be.”

Fear of failure: She did not “want to fail at being a parent… I’m fine failing as an actor. I didn’t want to fail at being a parent.”

Her fab life: “My mother said, ‘Patty, I just don’t want you to wake up at 50 and be unhappy.’ I woke up at 50 in stilettos and a thong. I’ve had a great sexy-ass life. And it’s not that my whole life is that. I love being an aunt, I love being a sister, I love being a daughter, I love being a great best friend. I’m a very good friend, I think. It’s not what I wanted to define me because I didn’t want to fail.”

[From People]

She said, a decade ago, that she believed she was missing that gene which makes people want to settle down and procreate, and I feel that. I think there are a lot of women missing that gene, and they just go along with the marriage-and-baby life because they were told that’s what “every woman” wants or should want. I relate to all of this, just like I relate to Mary J. Blige’s statement of “I like my freedom. I like being able to get up and go and move and do what I wanna do. I don’t want to have to tend to someone all the time.” Protect your peace, childfree peeps!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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