Chloe Sevigny is actually enjoying a low-key career resurgence these days. She never really went away and she was always working pretty consistently, but she realized very early in her career that TV work would help her enormously. And that’s what’s happened in the past five years or so – all kinds of prestige television work and collaborations with big-name actors and producers. She’s become one of the actresses in Ryan Murphy’s “stable,” and she’s currently promoting her role in the Murphy-produced Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. She plays the mother, Mary Louise Menendez. Chloe covers the September issue of The Cut and talked about her life as an almost-50-year-old actress and mother to a young son. Some highlights from The Cut:

Her parenting style: “I like having him close by. Maybe I spoil him or baby him too much, but I feel more at ease. All our faults, we’ve made them ourselves. We’re in our bed, and we have to lie in it. But now, it’s like I can sleep better when he’s there…”

Her son Vanja doesn’t listen to cool music: “I have friends that are very cool, and their kids listen to the music they listen to, and somehow we don’t. We just fall back on Disney.”

Her son is a good set baby: “He’s a good set baby. He is very quiet — he realizes that if he wants to make noise, he has to go outside.” And for Sevigny, emotionally, it’s easier just to bring him. “I almost like it better having him there and then I feel less guilty about being at work.”

On her relationship with her husband: “I value my relationship with my husband so much more. I value him and how much he participates and what he does for our household so much more than I ever could imagine. I’ll do anything not to lose him..I don’t want to do this by myself….When I’m having one of my anxiety spirals, he’ll always talk me down. What’s so nice about my husband is he’s so competent. I can trust he can take care of everything, so I don’t have to, and that’s really relaxing.”

Her reflections on aging: “The aging process is very challenging. I think my ego is just very fragile…It’s been pretty daunting since the baby and then hitting this area where it’s harder to lose weight. And I’m just not back to where I was before. That’s been pretty frustrating for me. I just want to feel good. You want to feel good in your body, right?”

On being the ‘It’ girl: “Does anybody need another photo of me? I’ve been doing it since I was 18.”

On wanting to take a break from her career (sometimes): “What I would really like to do is buy a house in Provincetown, open a vintage store, and just be like the crazy old lady that people come and visit.”

On acting as a respite: Acting still has its appeal beyond its reliable paychecks. “Sometimes it’s really nice just to be like, ‘Okay, tell me where to stand and what to say and how you want me to say it.’ And that can be very relaxing. One of my favorite things is relinquishing control because I’ve also supported my mom since I was 21 years old” — when her father died — “and had a role reversal with her. It’s just been a lot of pressure since then.”

[From The Cut]

She’s spoken about that before, how she supports her mother financially and has done so for decades. That’s also why she’s taken steadier-paying gigs in television. Chloe has indicated that while she loves independent film, she was never really offered any mainstream projects, so it’s not like she’s ever collected big paychecks for anything. She’s just a regular working actress who clocks in like it’s a 9-5 job. She sounds very happy as a mother too – motherhood came later in life for her, and she appreciates her situation so much, with a young child and a supportive husband. The It Girl grew up! Eventually.

The Cut’s first solo print issue is here, and it marks the beginning of a new chapter and was a labor of love from every editor who pored over these pages. Read editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples's introduction to the issue: https://t.co/c160f1XsEn pic.twitter.com/jUhO23DNbk

— The Cut (@TheCut) September 4, 2024

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.