Mary-Louise Parker Quitting Acting Because People Are Mean Online

Award-winning actress Mary-Louise Parker can put up with the brutal rejection that comes with being an actor, but she’s had enough from internet commenters.

“The world has gotten too mean for me, it’s just too bitchy,” she said in an interview with News Corp Australia. “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.”

As someone with somewhat of a public persona (not on MLP’s level, obviously), I can sympathize; I know what it’s like to get called a cunt/whore/bitch on a regular basis. I have internet stalkers who tell me I’m worthless. A commenter once told me I had oversized thighs. The harassment doesn’t all happen online, either: I was once accosted at an intimate party by a stranger who told me that my body of work was “trivial.” (Thanks for letting me know your thoughts on the one article of mine you’ve read in front of all my friends, random dude!)

If I have to put up with this shit, I can only imagine how an actual celebrity feels. Actually, I don’t have to; a very famous person once sent me a lengthy, emotional email after I tore his work apart. I was shocked that such a Big Deal Guy cared what I thought. But we all care, or at least most of us do. Mary-Louise Parker does.

But really? You care enough about jealous assholes to quit a profession you love, after making it so far in the industry? “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,” she said. Exactly! If you put anything interesting or meaningful out into the world, people are going to criticize it — and you — because many human beings are bitter and small, and social media enables them to join up and be collectively horrible together, like a tsunami of dicks. It’s rough. But it’s only so rough as you allow it to be.

Then again, who knows what MLP has been dealing with? “It’s only started happening to me recently that I’ve felt weary of it all, so I don’t know,” she said. Maybe she’ll change her mind. Or maybe she’ll stop reading drivel written by losers who’ve never accomplished 1/100th of what she has — and never will.