Mary-Louise Parker: Internet Trolls Forcing Her Retirement?

Mary-Louise Parker may have had a huge hit on her hands with “Weeds”–as well as two new movies about to debut–but that hasn’t stopped her from being the subject of tormen...
Mary-Louise Parker: Internet Trolls Forcing Her Retirement?
Written by Amanda Crum
  • Mary-Louise Parker may have had a huge hit on her hands with “Weeds”–as well as two new movies about to debut–but that hasn’t stopped her from being the subject of torment by internet trolls, and she says they’re a good part of the reason she wants to leave showbiz.

    The 48-year old actress says that after reading the mean-spirited comments people have written about her on the web, she’s kind of over it.

    “I don’t know how many more movies I wanna do,” Parker said. “I wouldn’t mind doing a TV show again, I’d like to do a couple more plays, but I’m almost done acting, I think. The world has gotten too mean for me, it’s just too bitchy. All the websites and all the blogging and all the people giving their opinion and their hatred … it’s all so mean-spirited, it’s all so critical. It’s sport for people, it’s fun to get on at night and unleash their own self-loathing by attacking someone else who they think has a happier life — or something, I dunno.”

    But a big part of her issue with the web is that she wants to protect her kids from the cruelty that seems to pervade every corner of it. If she had things her way, she says, she’d throw her computer into a lake and raise her kids, do some baking, and get away from the world.

    “I don’t know if you can imagine a friend sending you something they thought was funny, that was something mean someone wrote about you and there’s like 50 comments from complete strangers across the world about you. And you can say, ‘Oh, I let it roll off my back’ and ‘I wouldn’t take it personally,’ but you have no idea until it happens to you. It doesn’t feel nice,” she said. “I stay away from it as best I can because I’m too thin-skinned, but still it finds you.”

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