Mary Steenburgen, 73, says she isn’t haunted by the roles she missed out on because they led her to the life she has now.
Speaking on Saturday’s episode of The Daily Beast’s “Obsessed” podcast, the actor said she made “one big mistake” in her career by passing on a role that she “probably should have done.”
Steenburgen said she’ll “never tell anyone” which role it was out of respect for the actor who ultimately got the part. However, looking back, she doesn’t really regret the decision because changing that one choice could have changed the course of her life, she said.
“I know someone that is very haunted by roles that other people — including myself — get, and I feel so bad for this person because, for whatever reason, I’m free of that,” Steenburgen said. “I always have been.”
She said her “weird spirituality” has led her to believe that everything happens for a reason, including the role she thought she should have accepted.
“The truth is, I don’t really feel I should have, because if I had done that, I might not have met Ted, and then Kate and Alexis wouldn’t be my stepdaughters,” Steenburgen said. “All the ways that my life would be different are impossible to imagine.”
Steenburgen married actor Ted Danson in 1995. They have a blended family, with two children each from previous marriages.
Rather than dwelling on other people’s success, Steenburgen said she finds joy in watching actors she admires deliver great performances.
“I’m sad for people that don’t feel that,” she added. “It’s not a competitive sport. You’re in it together.”
Steenburgen said she takes a similar view of the movies that didn’t turn out as she’d hoped.
She always found something worthwhile in the projects she’s taken on, whether it’s a lifelong friendship, a lesson she learned, or memories she made with her children, she said.
“I’ve made really good movies and some of them epically good, but I’ve also made some turkeys, and I’m glad I did them,” Steenburgen said.
Other actors have also said they’re at peace with missing out on career-defining roles.
Before Margot Robbie became Barbie, Anne Hathaway was attached to an earlier iteration of the film. In a 2023 appearance on the “Happy, Sad, Confused” podcast, Hathaway said she sees it as a “lucky thing” that it never happened because it made way for the version audiences ultimately fell in love with.
“They hit a bull’s-eye. And the bull’s-eye caused the entire world to reach this level of ecstasy. Now imagine that version — that much energy, that much anticipation, that much emotion — but it’s not the right version,” Hathaway said.
Cillian Murphy nearly landed the role of Batman in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy before it went to Christian Bale. In 2023, he told GQ it was “for the best.”
“I never considered myself as the right physical specimen for Batman. To me, it was always going to be Christian Bale,” Murphy said.
