In a recent Vogue cover interview, Timothée Chalamet raised eyebrows by suggesting that it’s “bleak” to be child-free by choice.
The context of the quote was that he was recalling his reaction to an interview with someone — whose name he would “definitely” not reveal — “bragging about not having kids and how much time it afforded them to do other stuff.” “Holy shit. Oh my God. Bleak,” he recalled saying to a friend.
As you may have seen, Timothée copped a lot of backlash for these comments. And amid the online discourse, some fans speculated that he may have been referencing Seth Rogen, who’s one of the most notable celebrities to have discussed the benefits of being child-free. But, it’s worth noting that TONS of celebrities have talked openly about the reasons they’ve chosen not to have kids. So, here’s a roundup of stars who are child-free and love it that way.
1. Seth and his wife, Lauren Miller, have been together since 2004 and got married in 2011. And since then, Seth has attributed a lot of his career success to the fact that he and Lauren actively chose not to have kids.
“Me and my wife, neither of us were like that. Honestly, the older we get the more happy and reaffirmed we are with our choice to not have kids,” he said in 2023. “We are in the prime of our lives. We are smarter than we’ve ever been. We understand ourselves more than we ever have. We have the capacity to achieve a level of work and a level of communication and care for one another, and a lifestyle we can live with one another that we’ve never been able to live before, and we can just do that and we don’t have to raise a child — which the world does not need right now.”
Notably, Seth has faced backlash for sharing his views on child-free life, and he followed up earlier this year by telling critics: “You should only have kids if you really want kids, and we just don’t really want kids…I look at my friends with kids, and honestly, I feel like some of them are incredibly happy and fulfilled, and some of them seem like maybe they wish they had put a little more thought into it. I just didn’t want to be one of those people.”
2. Tracee Ellis Ross is child-free and single in her 50s — and very happy that way. “I do not believe that my life is unworthy because I don’t have children,” said during an appearance at the New York Times Well Festival this year. “I do not believe that my life is unworthy because I do not have a man or partner. I do believe that I mother all over the place. I do believe that I do very valued things in the world and for people that I care about and love.”
3. In a 2019 interview with Elle magazine, Miley Cyrus opened up about the judgment that comes with not wanting kids, saying: “People feel sorry for you, like you’re a cold, heartless bitch who’s not capable of love…Why are we trained that love means putting yourself second and those you love first? If you love yourself, then what? You come first.”
In the same interview, she stated that her desire to live a child-free life has largely been influenced by climate change. “We’re getting handed a piece-of-shit planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child,” she said. “Until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.”
4. Speaking of Miley, her godmother, Dolly Parton, has also been very vocal about not having her own children. Dolly, who was married to her late husband, Carl Dean, for 60 years, said during an interview with Oprah in 2020 that not having kids allowed her much more freedom in life.
“I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids…so I could do things like Imagination Library [her book gifting program],” she said. “Because if I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done. I wouldn’t be in a position to do all of the things I’m doing now.” Knowing she made the right decision, Dolly added: “I’ve made sacrifices, but I think, like I said, I believe what I know I’m supposed to do.”
5. In an interview with the Guardian in 2013, Christopher Walken said he would “absolutely not” have the career he has today if he and his wife, Georgianne, had had children. “I’m sure many of the kids I knew as a child would have continued in showbusiness, but they had kids of their own, had to do something dependable,” he said, explaining that being child-free gave him the flexibility to do whatever he wanted. “I didn’t, so I could get by even in periods of unemployment.”
6. Kim Cattrall considered having children by herself when she was in her late 30s, and even made “inquiries through my ob-gyn about sperm banks.” However, she ultimately realized that having her own kids wasn’t in her destiny. “When I feel lost and can’t make a decision, I just stop and get quiet. I take a time-out. I ask myself, ‘How does this feel? What do I want my life to be like?’” she said in O Magazine in 2003. “I try not to listen to the shoulds or coulds, and try to get beyond expectations, peer pressure, or trying to please — and just listen…When I answered those questions regarding having children, I realized that so much of the pressure I was feeling was from outside sources, and I knew I wasn’t ready to take that step into motherhood.”
Despite not pursuing motherhood in the traditional sense, Kim has been very clear about the fact that she still considers herself to be a “parent.” “There is a way to become a mother in this day and age, which doesn’t include your name on the child’s birth certificate. You can express that maternal side, very clearly, very strongly,” she told the BBC in 2015. “I didn’t change nappies, which is okay with me, but I did help my niece get through medical school. I did sit down with my nephew when he was [going through] a very tough time to join the army. And those are very motherly things to do, very nurturing things to do.”
7. In 2023, Margaret Cho said that she simply didn’t prioritize having kids because it “doesn’t look like fun.” “I think my life would’ve been very different if I had children. I ultimately decided not to because I just don’t want to love anybody that much, and that’s a hard choice,” she said during an interview for The Midst. “I see that happen with my friends and family and their kids, and I’m like, ‘That doesn’t look like fun.’”
8. Though he’s previously joked that he might have some kids running around out there, Jared Leto told ES Magazine in 2017 that he’s far too busy to commit to fatherhood. “I think it’s really important to be present if you have children,” he said. “I have a lot of…things to take care of.”
9. Oprah Winfrey has long stood firm in her decision not to have children or get married, despite being in a relationship with Stedman Graham since the 1980s. “If I had kids, my kids would hate me,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in 2013. “They would have ended up on the equivalent of the Oprah show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would’ve probably been them.”
She doubled down again in 2019, telling People that her work on The Oprah Winfrey Show showed her “the depth of responsibility and sacrifice that is actually required to be a mother.” “I realized, ‘Whoa, I’m talking to a lot of messed-up people, and they are messed up because they had mothers and fathers who were not aware of how serious that job is,’” she said. “I don’t have the ability to compartmentalize the way I see other women do. It is why, throughout my years, I have had the highest regard for women who choose to be at home [with] their kids, because I don’t know how you do that all day long.”
10. In 2024, John Cena candidly said that the reason he and his wife, Shay Shariatzadeh, haven’t had kids is simply because they “don’t want them.” “I have a certain curiosity about life, and I also know the investment that it takes,” he said on the Club Shay Shay podcast. “I don’t think I’m personally ready, nor will I ever be, to invest the time it needs to be a great parent because I want to live life for all it is…And I still have a lot to do. And I still want to do a lot. I have a wonderful partner I do it with. We’ve had open conversations about this. We share the same values.”
11. Mary J. Blige is “Just Fine” with not having kids. “I have nieces and nephews forever, and I’m always watching how people are scrambling around for babysitters. I don’t want to go through that,” she told E! Daily Pop in 2022. “I like my freedom. I like being able to get up and go and move and do what I want to do. I don’t want to have to tend to someone all the time.”
12 & 13. Portia de Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres love kids, but they’re happy not to have their own. “At this point, I feel like I’m disappointing the whole of America, not just my mother,” Portia joked during an interview with Jimmy Kimmel in 2014. “[Kids are] adorable and we love them and we play with them, and then we leave.”
That same year, Ellen made similar comments during an interview with People, saying, “We’d probably be great parents. But it’s a human being, and unless you think you have excellent skills and have a drive or yearning in you to do that, the amount of work that that is and responsibility — I wouldn’t want to screw them up.”
14. Chelsea Handler is simply not interested in having children, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love them. “People think I hate kids,” she said during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live this year. “I don’t hate kids, I just don’t want one. It’s just like, I don’t want spaghetti bolognese — I’m not interested, you know?” She previously told Us Weekly: “I’m not the marrying kind. I am not looking for children. I just want to have lots of love stories.”
15. Back in 2008, Renée Zellweger told The London Times that “motherhood has never been an ambition” for her. “I don’t think like that,” she explained. “I never have expectations like, ‘When I’m 19 I’m going to do this, and by the time I’ve hit 25 I’m going to do that.’ I just take things as they come, each day at a time, and if things happen, all well and good. I just want to be independent and be able to take care of myself. Anything else is just gravy.”
Years later, in 2025, Renée talked to The Irish Times about how she feels the societal conversations around child-free living have changed. “To choose not to have children isn’t that exceptional, is it?” she said. “I think it’s quite common.” And this list shows that she’s right!
16. Perhaps my favorite no-BS reasoning for not having children, Stevie Nicks told In Style in 2002: “I don’t want to go to PTA meetings.” “It’s like, Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover?” she explained. “With kids, your focus changes.”
17. Sam Rockwell and his long-term partner, The White Lotus star Leslie Bibb, have been together for nearly 20 years, and their lives are perfectly great without kids. “We just like it the way it is,” Sam told The Standard in 2022. “Listen, if I knew they’d turn out great, then maybe — but there’s just no guarantee…I don’t want to be selfish and be a bad parent. It takes a lot to be a parent.”
18. Back in 2007, Rachael Ray said she simply had too much going on in her life to be a parent. “I don’t have time,” she told People. “I work too much to be an appropriate parent. I feel like a bad mom to my dog some days because I’m just not here enough. I just feel like I would do a bad job if I took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I’m doing.”
In 2025, Rachael reflected on the backlash she faced for opting not to have kids, but made it clear that she has no regrets at all. “Boy, did I get bashed for it over the decades,” she said on her I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead podcast. “For me, if I have the absolute worst day, or I’m sick as a dog — as the expression goes — the thing that makes me feel best is to go home and literally climb into bed under a blanket with my dog.”
19. Lily Tomlin said there “wouldn’t have been room in [her] life to raise children.” “I didn’t want to — and I’m glad I don’t — have any children. God only knows what I would have done with them, poor things,” she told Metro Weekly in 2006. “I was so involved with my career, and I would have had to give up the career in large part because I could not possibly have shortchanged the child.” When asked if she would’ve been a good mother, Lily replied: “I probably would have been. But I was selfish. I didn’t want to be.”
20. Ava DuVernay is child-free by choice, but feels that her films are her children. “I put my blood into them,” the Selma director told Mama Knows It All. “It’s really what has my name on it. It’s what I’ll leave behind in the world.”
21. In 2018, Sarah Paulson told Town & Country that she’d chosen to focus on her acting career, not raising kids. “I don’t want to be torn,” she said. “I don’t want to look at my child and say, ‘You’re the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to me, but also the death knell.’”
“It was hard for my mother to be everywhere, to come to the school play and make a living,” she continued. “I’ve always known what I wanted out of my professional life, and I didn’t want to turn around and go, ‘If I had only made the choice to just dedicate this time in my life to me.’ It’s selfish, but I think the word selfish gets a bad rap.”
22. Alison Brie married Dave Franco in 2017, and since then, she’s talked candidly about the fact that neither of them are interested in having kids. “I don’t really want to have kids,” she told The London Times in 2019. “It’s great, because I don’t worry about when should I get pregnant, between seasons, while we’re shooting [Glow], I don’t think about it every day. I think about how much we’re involved in our cats’ lives. Oh my God, if it was a child.”
23. Ricky Gervais and his wife, Jane Fallon, are very much united in their decision not to have children. And in the past, Ricky has shared the “many reasons” for this life choice. Having previously joked about the world being “overpopulated,” Ricky told Ellen DeGeneres in 2019 that parenthood would cause him way too much anxiety. “I’d worry sick about a baby. I have a cat and I worry about that. I check the door three times before I go out,” he said. “I put food and water in every room in case the door closes and he’s peckish for 20 minutes.”
24. Gloria Steinem has credited the feminist movement for giving her the confidence to choose a child-free life. “I accepted it for a long time, and I thought that ‘OK, I’m getting married. I’m having children. I’m definitely doing that, just not right now.’ I’d put it in the future and then, fortunately, the women’s movement came along and made me realize I was actually happy and that there were more ways to live than one,” she said at the Feminist Makers Conference in 2014.
25. Dame Helen Mirren told British Vogue that having children was not part of her “destiny.” “I kept thinking it would be, waiting for it to happen, but it never did, and I didn’t care what people thought,” she said. “It was only boring old men [who would ask me]. And whenever they went, ‘What? No children? Well, you’d better get on with it, old girl,’ I’d say, ‘No! Fuck off!’”
So, do any of these examples resonate with you? If you’re someone who doesn’t want kids, feel free to tell me about it in the comments! Alternatively, if you prefer to remain anonymous, please use the form below.
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