Mary-Louise Parker, Star of Weeds, May Quit Acting Over "Mean Spirited, Bitchy" Opinions in Entertainment World

Mary-Louise Parker is calling it quits. The star of the long-running TV series Weeds, action comedy movie franchise Red and the new comic book blockbuster R.I.P.D today told News Corp Australia, "I'm almost done acting".

Parker insisted she's too thin-skinned for the increasingly mean world of entertainment.

"I'm not really that into it anymore," said the 48-year-old while promoting R.I.P.D. "I don't know how many more movies I wanna do. 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."

Rather than the job itself, Parker said it was the world that has built up around the entertainment industry that was wearing her down.

"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."

Mother to a nine-year-old boy and six-year-old girl, Parker said her decision to get out is "definitely" driven by wanting to keep her kids away from such hatred.

"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.

"And there's more of that than there is whatever praise people think you're getting. There's way more mean-spiritedness. I stay away from it as best I can because I'm too thin-skinned, but still it finds you."

Parker, who has been featured in films including Fried Green Tomatoes and Red Dragon and in TV series The West Wing, said culture at large has changed for the worse in recent times.

"It's a mean culture - it's reality TV and it's watching people suffer and watching people humiliate themselves. It's little girls in pageants and housewives and plastic surgery and people in rehab. It just feels like a very ugly ... it's like someone just lifted up a rock and that's all we're looking at."

As to exactly when the curtain will fall on her acting career, Parker is unsure. She will perform on Broadway in the play The Snow Geese in October. Red 2, in which she re-teams with Bruce Willis and John Malkovich, opens in Australia on August 29, followed by R.I.P.D on September 12.

"It's only started happening to me recently that I've felt weary of it all, so I dunno," Parker said. "There's another play I wanna do after (The Snow Geese) and I wouldn't mind doing a couple more years of a TV show, but after that not much more."