Allison Janney, 66, opened up about never marrying or having children on a podcast this week.
The Oscar winner appeared on the “Reclaiming With Monica Lewinsky” episode that dropped Tuesday.
Janney admitted she always assumed she would wed because “at the time I was growing up, that’s what you did,” she noted on the podcast.
She moved to New York to pursue acting and had long-term boyfriends who, like her, didn’t want kids.
But in her mid-30s, during a four-year relationship, she thought it might be time.
“And then it was apparent to me that this was not the man I wanted to have kids with,” she shared. “So I was like, ‘OK, well, I guess that didn’t happen.'”
Janney described the loneliness of staying in a relationship she knew was wrong.
“The way you feel in a relationship that you know is probably not the one and you’re kind of in it and you don’t know how to get out of it — that’s the most lonely feeling in the world to be with someone and feel alone,” she reflected. “Oh my God, that’s awful. So, it didn’t happen for me.'”
She maintained she never truly wanted children.
“I knew I never wanted to have kids,” she continued. “That’s just something that I’ve always known.”
Still, in her 40s, she felt she should “just try” and visited a fertility doctor.
The specialist gave her blunt news.
“The first I heard that I wouldn’t be able to have a kid at 40-something was in this fertility doctor’s office. She was like, ‘The odds are not in your favor,'” she recalled.
Janney admitted she had believed women could easily have kids in their 50s.
“And she said, ‘Also, where is your partner?’ And the guy that I was with, he didn’t even come with me and I was like, ‘I guess that is a sign, isn’t it?'”
Her dogs have become her true love.
“Animals, especially dogs, are my heart,” she said. “I could not love dogs more.”
Janney has kept her romantic life largely private.
She dated actor Dennis Gagomiros from 1994 to 2001.
She was engaged to “Our Very Own” co-star Richard Jenik, but they split in 2006 after two years.
Her most recent public relationship was with production manager Philip Joncas, whom she met filming 2013’s “The Way Way Back”; they ended their five-year relationship in 2017.
In the viral moment that resurfaced this week, Janney had already addressed these themes back in April 2021 on “The Drew Barrymore Show.”
She said then she was “really at this time in my life getting to know who I am and what I want.”
“I’d love to eventually find someone to share my life with, but if it doesn’t happen, I’ll be just fine,” she said on the daytime program.
She also stated her philosophy plainly: “I would rather regret not having kids than have kids and regret that. I’m OK with it.”
Janney currently stars in season 2 of “Palm Royale,” streaming Wednesdays on Apple TV+.