Why '90s 'It Girl' Gretchen Mol Left New York City — and Has No Regrets (Exclusive)

01/04/2025 12:00 PM

The 'Boardwalk Empire' actress, now starring in the upcoming film 'Millers in Marriage,' tells PEOPLE she loves life out of the spotlight

In the mid-'90s, Gretchen Mol was a rising star on the Hollywood scene, acting opposite major talents including Matt Damon, Jude Law and Leonardo DiCaprio. Vanity Fair even put her on the cover of its magazine in 1998, dubbing her the "it girl" at the time.

But these days, at 52, Mol's life and career are decidedly calmer — and she's more than okay with that.

"There's always new fresh faces in Hollywood," the actress tells PEOPLE with a laugh. "It's a constant wheel that turns over. And it is a youth-loving business — that's a reality there, but that's okay. I think getting older as an actor actually frees you up. You have more wisdom, more moments where you've been both up and down, and the stakes aren't so high."

She adds, "Your jobs become more about the fun and process of creating, rather than what people are going to think about the result or say about you."

Now starring in writer and director Ed Burns' upcoming indie dramedy Millers in Marriage, Mol has also left big-city life behind, making the move from New York City to the Berkshires during the COVID-19 pandemic and then deciding to stay there to raise her two kids with her husband, director Tod Williams.

Related: Gretchen Mol: Second Child Grows Up 'So Fast'

"We still go to the city when we need to, but the kids go to school locally," Mol says of her son, 17, and daughter, 14. "It's such a small, lovely community that we found here. Most people, I know what they do for a living, they know what I do. And it's just nice to be with them, to know everyone's names. It's just really good people."

She laughs at how vastly different it all is from when she came up in her career at a time before social media.

"Vanity Fair, in particular, meant something in a way that if I tried to explain to my kids, they'd just be like, 'What?' " she says of being dubbed the "it girl" on the magazine's cover.

In Millers in Marriage, Mol plays a woman in her early 50s who was once a cool rock star but, in her second act, is dealing with a failing marriage and wondering if it's too late to make different choices. She says the dialogue in the script felt familiar to her.

"It's conversations I have with friends," she explains of chats about this time in life in your late 40s and early 50s when the kids are older and less demanding of your time and attention and you're leaning back into who you were before parenthood.

"I was fortunate that I kept working while raising kids, but my priorities shifted," Mol says. "But now I have more time to think about those endeavors I always wanted to do."

That includes saying yes to a Yellowstone spinoff about her character Evelyn Dutton, should the opportunity arise.

Related: A Guide to Every Yellowstone Prequel and Spinoff Series, from 1923 to The Madison

"I'd love it!" she says, noting that it was a bummer that her character died in the first episode. "There's so much to explore there, especially with the mother-daughter relationship."

In 2017, Mol made fresh headlines when she wrote an op-ed for The Hollywood Reporter about the longstanding ugly rumor that she had a fling with Harvey Weinstein to get roles. She says the rumor began on a "blind gossip" site and then took root in ways she couldn't even comprehend.

'Over the years, it was gleefully embroidered, becoming increasingly bizarre... but the salacious, slut-shaming and misogynist message to the fable remained the same: In Hollywood, a young woman must build her career by humiliating herself and sleeping with powerful men," Mol wrote.

She added, "Gossip bloggers sold that same garbage, and it was heartbreaking how many people were ready to believe it."

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Mol tells PEOPLE, "The part that really made me angry was it wasn't like I had this humongous career."

"If I'd been flying high, then maybe sure, take your shots, but I was always really doing small films," she continues. "But I was so grateful to have that moment to address it. I just hate that it came out of such an ugly thing that was the truth of our business."