After Robin Williams’ Death, Sarah Michelle Gellar Walked Away From Hollywood—Here’s Why
Shaken by the loss of Robin Williams, Sarah Michelle Gellar stepped away from acting for years, revealing in a candid interview how grief forced a reset of her life and career.
Sarah Michelle Gellar just explained why she hit pause on acting for a stretch, and it goes straight back to losing Robin Williams. It is candid, personal, and honestly, it makes a lot of sense if you remember where her life was at the time.
The moment everything caught up to her
On the Shut Up Evan podcast, Gellar walked through what the end of The Crazy Ones did to her emotionally. She had just had two kids close together. She started shooting that show when her son was three months old, and she was breastfeeding throughout production. Then Williams died in 2014, and it knocked the wind out of her.
'It was like, the postpartum hit me, and that loss was so huge. And I just felt a little directionless for the first time in my life.'
That was the wake-up call. She figured maybe that was the sign to slow down and actually live the moments she did not want to lose. So she stepped back from acting, and she is glad she did.
No regrets about stepping away
Gellar says the break let her show up for her family in a way that is tough to pull off when you are on a set for 12 hours and hopping on planes. She did not miss the stuff parents always talk about missing when work takes over:
- School shows and performances
- First steps
- Lost teeth
Time away also reset how she looks at work. She is choosier now and does not feel pressure to be constantly on a set just to stay visible. She is realistic about the risk, too — sometimes audiences move on. And she is okay with that. She is also grateful there is still a place for her when she does want to jump back in.
What she is doing next (and what she is not)
She has popped up in a few quick movie cameos lately and is eyeing a return to more live-action film work. Her name has been floated alongside Ready or Not 2: Here We Come and a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer project. We will see how those shake out as they move through development.
Quick note while we are here: despite a stray label you may have seen elsewhere, Gellar is not an X-Men alum. That is just wrong.
Why Williams mattered so much in this
Williams, her Crazy Ones co-star, died by suicide in 2014 at age 63. That loss was enormous for her, and it landed at the exact moment she was stretched thin from new parenthood. Put together, it is not hard to see why she chose to step back — and why she is comfortable with the choice now.