No two stay-at-home parents have the exact same story, but a surprising number of A-list actresses have gone on a similar trajectory when they have kids. Over the years, some of Hollywood’s hottest leading ladies have opted to turn a corner when they became moms for the first time, turning down movie roles they previously would have leapt at and finding that nothing felt quite as fulfilling as being home with their kids for all the little moments. One other thing these actresses typically have in common? The financial means to make the decision to become a stay-at-home mom if they wanted to — and moms including Eva Mendes, Jennifer Garner, and Demi Moore all found at one point or another that they did want to.
For every example of a celebrity mom who slowed her workload way down, however, there’s another famous mom who’s rushed back right away, fearing they’d become irrelevant or develop a reputation for being difficult. Megan Fox spoke more about this phenomenon on The Kelly Clarkson Show, where host Clarkson was all too familiar with the struggles she described too.
Fox described the new mom pressure in Hollywood as so intense, she found herself thinking about weight she needed to lose midway through delivering one of her three sons: “I had to be on a TV show. So in your brain, you’re delivering, and I’m like, ‘OK, well I’ve got to lose 30 pounds in eight weeks,'” she shared. “Those things are really stressful, and you’re supposed to be bonding, and nurturing yourself, and nourishing your baby. That creates a lot of tension and a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety for us to go back to work too early.”
With that in mind, we can understand more than ever why moms like Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore weren’t rushing back to movie sets after welcoming their babies — and why so many of these celebs-turned-stay-at-home-moms emphasize their gratitude at being able to do this above all else.
Read on for more moms who took a break from Hollywood when their kids arrived, and why.
This article was previously published in 2021.
Julia Roberts
While Julia Roberts has been a Hollywood mainstay for decades, there was a recent block of time where the actress was noticeably absent from the big and small screen. Between 2018 and 2022, the actress and mom of three chose to be closer to her family — 17-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus and 14-year-old son Henry, all of whom she shares with husband Daniel Moder.
The actress recently made her return to the screen in the Starz series Gaslit. But prior to her time back in the acting seat, Roberts really relished her time at home. “It wasn’t by design,” the actress told the New York Times of taking a step back from the spotlight. Roberts emphasized that part of the reason she took a step back had a lot to do with “not finding something that I was interested in. I was surprised how quickly the years seemed to go by.”
Furthermore, Roberts told the outlet, “I have a sense of great pride in being home with my family and considering myself a homemaker.” The Oscar winner also emphasized that, as her kids get older, she wants to show them “I can be creative and that it’s meaningful to me — so meaningful that for periods of time I will choose to focus on that almost more than my family, which has been hard for me to come to terms with.”
Sandra Bullock
For decades, Sandra Bullock has been one of the most in-demand actresses, constantly starring in blockbuster hits like Speed, The Proposal, and Ocean’s Eight, to name a few. But in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Bullock said she’s taking a hiatus to focus on her children.
In the interview, she said, “I take my job very seriously when I’m at work. And I just want to be 24/7 with my babies and my family.” She added, “That’s where I’m gonna be for a while.” She didn’t say how long the hiatus will be, but we’re excited about her decision! She adopted her childrenLouis, 12, and Laila, 10.
Jennifer Garner
Jennifer Garner took a big step back from her leading lady roles after she welcomed kids Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel with ex Ben Affleck, only returning to film Dallas Buyers Club because she was worried it would be her last chance after saying no to so many jobs.
“He said, ‘This is going to be a call about one of two things: It’s going to be a call about you doing this little movie, or it’s going to be a call about you retiring,'” Garner told The Hollywood Reporter of a call from her agent. “And I knew I’d asked enough of my representatives, who’d been working their tails off for me and I had said no to everything and kept getting pregnant. But I was truly overwhelmed by a third kid. Ben was making Argo and I was just trying to keep the plates spinning. I also knew that I didn’t want to be done acting, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.'”
Eva Mendes
After Eva Mendes married Ryan Gosling and welcomed their two daughters Esmeralda and Amada, she was noticeably gone from the red carpet and premieres where she’d previously reigned.
“I’m just so obsessed with my kids that I don’t want to leave them,” Mendes told E! News in 2018. “They’re just still so little.”
In 2020, she explained further in response to an Instagram comment asking about her step back from public life: “As a mother now, there are many roles I won’t do. There are many subject matters that I don’t want to be involved with, so it limits my choices and I’m fine with that. I have to set an example for my girls now.”
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie’s brood of six — Maddox, Zahara, Pax, Shiloh, and twins Vivienne and Knox — with Brad Pitt have never seemed to slow the actress down at all, but she’s spoken out about the different career choices she’s made over the years because of them — especially after separating from Pitt and beginning a long custody battle.
“I think I’m going to have to give up the acting as the kids hit the teenage years, anyway, too much to manage at home,” Jolie told Britain’s Channel 4 News in 2012. “I have enjoyed being an actress. I am so grateful to the job and I have had great experiences…but f it went away tomorrow I would be very happy to be home with the children. I wake up in the morning as a mom and I turn on the news like everybody else and I see what’s happening and I want to be part of the world in a positive way.”
In 2021, she explained to Entertainment Weekly that her dream of directing had been put on pause too: “I love directing, but I had a change in my family situation that’s not made it possible for me to direct for a few years,” she said, adding that she’d been opting for “shorter jobs” that allowed her to be “home more.”
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow mused to InStyle in 2012 about her decision to step back from acting roles and be more of a full-time mom to kids Apple and Moses, whom she shares with ex Chris Martin.
“I think some people, they don’t understand the choice that I’ve made. I guess it can be seen as a risk because I don’t have the same movie career that I used to have where I’d star in movies three times a year,” she said. “I haven’t even starred in movies since I’ve had my kids…just thinking, I want to have kids, and I want to be home with them.”
Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek welcomed daughter Valentina with husband François Pinault in 2007 and spoke to Marie Claire a few years later about why it wasn’t a struggle for her to decide to slow down on acting.
“I think if you are young and you have children, you still have so much to prove. When you have children later in life, you lose a bit of that urge for working,” Hayek said in 2012. “At the time, I was thinking, I can do another movie that may or may not work, or I can be with my child, nourish her, and not miss a moment of this precious time. And if my career is going to end in two years, what’s the difference, anyway?”
Cameron Diaz
In January 2020, Cameron Diaz sneakily announced to the world that she and Benji Madden had welcomed a baby daughter: Raddix. In 2021, she admitted she might be out of the movie business for good.
“Will I ever make a movie again? I’m not looking to, but will I? I don’t know. I have no idea,” she said on SiriusXM show Quarantined With Bruce. “Maybe, never say never, but I couldn’t imagine being a mom now, where I’m at as a mother with my child at her first year, to have to be on a movie set that takes 14 hours, 16 hours of my day away from my child.”
“I just feel so blessed that I get to be here now with my child and, you know, get to be the mother that I get to be,” she added. “It’s such a blessing, it’s completely privileged, and I’m just really, really grateful.”
Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore welcomed kids Olive and Frankie with ex Will Kopelman in 2012 and 2014 and has put her movie roles on the back burner ever since. Asked by Andy Cohen on Radio Andy whether there were any movie projects in her future, she said this: “If I’m being honest, the answer is no. I don’t want to be on a film set right now, but that could change when my kids are older.”
“I stopped doing movies when my kids were born because I’ve done it since I was in diapers, at 11 months old was when I started and it was a no-brainer for me to put making movies on a back burner so that I could be present and raise my kids myself,” she added. “I didn’t want to be on a film set asking the nanny how the kids were. That was not my journey.”
Lisa Bonet
Lisa Bonet was not asked to return for the second season of Cosby Show spinoff A Different World based around her popular character Denise Huxtable after she announced her pregnancy with daughter Zoë Kravitz., a move that ex Lenny Kravitz has since claimed was retaliatory. Both after welcoming Zoē with ex Lenny Kravitz and welcoming kids Lola and Nakoa-Wolf with new love Jason Momoa, Bonet took time off from acting to stay at home and raise her kids.
Demi Moore
In her memoir Inside Out, Demi Moore writes about her decision to become a stay-at-home mom to daughters Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah after going through her separation from their father Bruce Willis in 1998. While he continued to make movies, she lived in their home in Hailey, Idaho and took time off from acting to be with the girls full-time.
“I experienced the most conventional family dynamic I’d ever known in those years,” she wrote. “I was the stay-at-home mom whose life revolved entirely around the girls, their schedules, their breaks, their schools, their activities; and Bruce was the one working, the breadwinner. That Bruce was no longer my husband was irrelevant because he was the active father of my children; we felt more connected than we did before the divorce.”
Candace Cameron-Bure
In between Full House and the Full House reboot, Candace Cameron Bure had a whole chapter of her life that was dedicated to being a mom and staying out of the spotlight. In a 2021 episode of The Paula Paris Podcast, Bure opened up about her choice to become a stay-at-home mom to her kids Natasha, Maksim, and Lev with husband Valeri Bure.
“I wanted to keep working when I was just coming off of Full House and I wanted to have a family as well. And I realized very quickly that I could not do both with the excellence that I wanted to do both of them with, so one of them had to be put on pause,” she explained. “And that was an easy choice.”
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