Alexandra Artrip has broken her silence on walking away from Hollywood after her childhood role in Practical Magic.
Artrip, 37, played Antonia Owens in the 1998 cult classic, starring as the daughter of Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock) and niece of Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman). Her on-screen sister Kylie was played by Evan Rachel Wood. In a new interview, Artrip insisted the decision to quit acting was entirely her own, not her parents’ call.
“My parents truly presented the options to me and said, ‘Do you want to keep doing this?'” Artrip explained. She said the breaking point came when her mother explained they’d need to hire a set sitter, a required on-set chaperone for performers under 18. “My mom did it with me for the first year,” Artrip continued, “and that’s when she was like, ‘we’re going to have to get a set sitter.'”
With two siblings at home, Artrip’s mother struggled to balance time on set with family life. But Artrip herself balked at the idea of what she called a “babysitter.” Her parents proposed a compromise: step away now and return to acting later, after a normal childhood.
“They saw that it was really exhausting. It’s a lot of work. Fun, but a lot of work. So I was like, ‘yeah that’s fine, I’ll do it again when I’m 18 or once I’m out of college, or whatever.'”
Artrip kept her word. She finished school, then college, graduating in just three and a half years to accelerate her planned return to Los Angeles. “I lived [in California] for about six months and was trying to get back into acting and auditioning and stuff,” she recalled. She even reconnected with her former manager.
The comeback stalled. “I had done dance, I had done performing arts, but I hadn’t like been in acting classes and done theater. I was a rusty, to say the least.” While waiting tables in LA, Artrip faced mounting bills and dwindling momentum. “I realized that it was going to take a long time to get the wheels back under me and I was running out of money.”
The turning point arrived with cruel timing. “I ended up applying to grad school and literally the day I was supposed to sign my lease on my apartment in LA – this tiny little apartment under a freeway overpass, it was horrible – I got accepted to grad school I was like ‘I feel like this is a sign.'”
Artrip studied advertising and PR in graduate school. She now works in sales for a Texas-based company, having relocated there roughly a decade ago for the job. She married in 2019 and has two children.
Despite her decades away from the screen, Artrip admitted she would have considered returning for Practical Magic 2 had anyone reached out. “I think I would’ve,” she said. “I mean, it’s so silly to say because, as I said, I’m so out of practice,” She added with self-deprecating humor: “I think they would have had to talk to me like five years ago and been like ‘girl, get your act together.’ By the time it came to be, I probably would have set production back.”
Before Practical Magic, Artrip’s brief resume included single episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger and Touched by an Angel. The Warner Bros. Witchcraft drama, directed by Griffin Dunne, became her final credit. The film centered on two sisters, Bullock’s practical Sally and Kidman’s wild Gillian, carrying a family curse that dooms any man who loves them. Artrip and Wood appeared as Sally’s daughters, caught in the supernatural fallout when Gillian’s abusive boyfriend turns up dead.