Maria Bello’s Anti-Marriage Vows

by Jesse Kornbluth

“My mother. All my searching came back to her.” Mom’s wisdom: “‘To thine own self be true’—and do laugh.” Her mother gave her other invaluable and extremely practical advice: “She always said, ‘When you’re at the edge of a cliff, choose the jump.’ So I tell myself: Be afraid and do it anyway. I’ve always chosen the jump.” Bello chose “the jump” in Los Angeles, when she and screenwriter Dan McDermott decided to have a child without benefit of clergy. And she regularly flirts with danger when she tells producers and interviewers that, as a lifelong reader, she rarely goes to the movies or
watches television.

“Because I’m an actress, people ask, ‘Don’t you love film?’ And I reply: ‘No, I’ve always wanted to be a character in a book.’ And by that, I mean a character in the romances and swashbuckler adventures I devoured as a kid. The character I’d most like to be is…Indiana Jones.”

And then there is the “jump” that all artists, writers, actors, and musicians take, which is to reject the life of company-supported health plans and 401(k)s and bet everything on yourself. My life is like that, and I find it terrifying. So I ask Bello, “Don’t you ever have that 3 am moment, when you think: ‘I am alone,’ and ‘spinster’ might just not be a joke?”

“We all have that moment,” Bello says. “Fortunately, I have an amazing Jungian analyst—and prayer. The truth is that every relationship ends, everyone will die. I accept that, but sometimes it’s hard, and I find myself digging my nails into any security blanket that’s handy—my boyfriend, whatever. And then I realize, of course this will change, and the less I hold on, the better.”

“Considering the Jane Austen movie,” I point out, “I really thought you’d say: ‘Thank goodness for my indispensable network of girlfriends.’”