Michelle Monaghan always says yes. It’s advice she gives me less than five minutes after we meet, which feels especially useful considering I have spent the past few weeks wondering what I’ve gotten myself into. I’ve been asked to guest edit this issue of S, which is not my day job. Somewhere between saying yes to this role and sitting down for lunch with our cover star, a little voice has started creeping in. Can I actually do this?
“Oh my God, yes,” Monaghan says when I tell her. “Yes, yes, yes, always say yes.”
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We’re sitting across from one another at The Consulate, a busy French-American brasserie on New York’s Upper West Side, though only moments earlier we were strangers. Monaghan had walked through the door and spotted me before the hostess had a chance to point out our table. She crossed the room with an easy smile and gave me the kind of hug you give someone you’re genuinely happy to see.
Any nerves I had been holding started to melt.
Monaghan looks exactly like what you’d picture when you think of good style (though she insists she hasn’t tried too hard): an oversized striped Saint Laurent men’s shirt, sleeves rolled to her elbows; white linen Bermuda shorts from Aritzia; and Ferragamo flats. Around one wrist is a silver Elsa Peretti Bone Cuff from Tiffany & Co., a gift from her husband, Peter White.
The conversation has barely started when she tells me that she knows the feeling I’m describing. More than two decades ago, after landing an audition for what would become her breakout role in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Monaghan flew to Los Angeles, got to her hotel, and decided she couldn’t possibly go through with it.
I have no idea what I’m doing, she remembers thinking. Monaghan tells me that she even called her agent to tell them she wasn’t going but, while on hold, something shifted. She had to say yes. She took the audition and got the part.
“The second I start to feel like I can’t do something, I remind myself that I’ve been here before and I can do it again,” she says.
At the age of 50, after more than 25 years in Hollywood, a career reignited by The White Lotus, and a new film, The Whisper Man, in which she acts opposite Robert De Niro, arriving this fall, Monaghan still gets nervous. She does occasionally wonder whether she can pull something off. The difference is that now she knows not to listen to that little voice.
Still, motherhood has a way of complicating that instinct to say yes, she tells me.
When Monaghan and White decided to start a family when she was in her thirties, her career was having real momentum. She had spent years working, only to find herself wondering what stepping away might cost her.
Coat by Dior; earrings, brooch, bracelet, and rings by Bvlgari.
“I always think to myself: never underestimate the power of believing in someone and really saying those words.”
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, is there going to be room for me at the table when I go back?'” she says.
There was, of course. And looking back, she thinks becoming a mother gave her more, not less, to bring to her work.
“I don’t think that we ever lose the talent that got us in the room,” she says. “I think that we actually have more clarity once we become parents. Those things are all just additives. Like, these are all just layers of awesome.”
Today, that perspective feels especially meaningful. Her career is thriving just as her family is entering a new stage. Her daughter, Willow, is 17 and getting ready to leave the nest. Her son, Tommy, is moving into his teenage years.
“There is so much gratitude,” she says. “And I kind of feel like, wow, like we did it. Like we’re still doing it. We’re still doing it. But we’re doing it together as a unit.”
Monaghan traces some of that confidence back to her parents in Iowa. Her father, she says, taught her work ethic and accountability. From her mother came compassion and tolerance. Neither had much context for the life their daughter was beginning to chase, but they believed in her anyway.
“They just fundamentally had so much belief in me that it made me really believe in myself,” she says. “I always think to myself: never underestimate the power of believing in someone and really saying those words.”
It’s something Monaghan now tries to give her own children, too. Even so, belief in the people you love doesn’t make the logistics of family life easy.
When I ask Monaghan whether she thinks work-life balance is possible, she doesn’t hesitate.
“No, absolutely no. No, no, no, no, no. I really don’t,” she says.
She laughs, then explains: “I believe you can have it all, right? But not all at once.”
Dress by Fendi; necklace, bracelet, and ring by Cartier.
For years, work often meant leaving Los Angeles and being away from her family during the week. She would fly home on Fridays, desperate to make the most of two days with her kids, and almost immediately shift into parenting overdrive.
“I would try to overcompensate,” she says. “I thought that I needed to come in and be like, ‘Why are your towels on the floor? You need to make your bed. Is your homework done?'”
By Sunday night, she would get back on a plane feeling worse.
“I would be absolutely devastated because I didn’t get what I needed and they didn’t get what they needed,” she says. “And I would feel absolutely shattered that I had missed out on that precious time that I had.”
Eventually, White suggested she try something different. Come home, he told her, but leave the routine to him. Don’t worry about laundry or meals. Don’t spend two days trying to catch up on everything she had missed. Just be with them.
“When he gave me that permission to be, it was so incredibly loving,” she says, her voice catching.
For a moment, neither of us speak. We don’t have to. I have a daughter of my own. Monaghan and I both know that feeling of trying to manage your career while still showing up for your kids.
“That moment changed everything for me in the way that I operated as a parent,” she continues. “He gave me permission to be present, so I could fill my cup and therefore fill their cup.”
They call it their “passing through method.” The idea was simple. Sometimes she really was just passing through. She didn’t need to fix everything while she was there — she just needed to be there.
That lesson has taken on a different meaning as her children have gotten older.
The things Monaghan misses now aren’t necessarily the milestones. They’re the ordinary moments, like the conversations from the back seat of the car. The things Tommy tells her when the lights are off at bedtime. The bits of banter she catches while driving.
“Those are the things that I love about them being older because I start to see their individuality and their uniqueness,” she says. “And I love that. I love them as humans. And I miss being around that.”
As our plates arrive, the conversation shifts from our children growing up to us getting older, too.
“Perimenopause, let’s go,” Monaghan says. We both laugh, mostly because there is relief in talking about it so plainly.
By her mid-forties, Monaghan had started experiencing anxiety in a way she never had before. Then came sleep changes and brain fog, symptoms that felt unfamiliar enough to make her question what was happening.
“I’m so glad so many women are having this conversation right now,” she says. “Because I think it’s so important for us to do for each other and also for our younger generation.”
The brain fog has been particularly frustrating because of what Monaghan does for a living. For years, memorizing pages of dialogue came easily. Now, learning a scene can take longer. She tells me preparing for roles is really time intensive in a way that it wasn’t before. She’s on hormone replacement therapy, pays attention to her bone health, prioritizes sleep, and exercises regularly. These days that means strength training, Pilates, and jogging. She also meditates when she can.
“I do fare better mentally and emotionally when I’m meditating on a regular basis,” she says. Her version is 20 minutes in the morning, sitting quietly while her mind does whatever it needs to do. She compares it to a garbage disposal for her brain.
She also tries not to reach for her phone first thing either, but admits that sometimes she does.
There’s no attempt to make any of it sound perfect. What interests Monaghan now is figuring out what helps her feel like her best self.
“When it started becoming hard for me to have that flow of learning lines, it made me feel very vulnerable,” she says. “And it still makes me feel very vulnerable.”
That same awareness has changed the way she spends the hours when she isn’t working.
Downtime, for Monaghan, can mean bouldering with Tommy or going for a run outdoors. Sometimes it’s baking with one of the kids. Sometimes all four family members cook dinner, clean up together, and put music on. There are dance parties at home.
“I’m a lot more intentional about how I spend my time these days,” she says.
That applies to friendship, too. She tells me about recently finding a few rare days when nobody had to work and she and a close friend could simply relax together, along with their families. They enjoyed good food and drink, watched the kids play, swam, and spent time outside. Nothing particularly remarkable happened. And that was the point.
“That’s the greatest thing about becoming older and wiser,” she says. “You become more clear about how you want to spend your time and you become really intentional about who you want to spend it with because you know what you really value.”
She even keeps a short list of questions pinned in the Notes app on her phone to help her make decisions. One of them has stayed with her: “Does this experience support my life?”
It’s a useful question for someone whose career is demanding more of her again.
This fall, Monaghan stars in The Whisper Man, a psychological thriller with Robert De Niro. After a few lighter projects, she was ready for something completely different.
The film gave her that opportunity. What drew her in was less the suspense than what sits underneath it.
“What really resonated with me was generational trauma and how we confront it or we don’t confront it and how, ultimately, our past will continue to catch up with us,” she says. “And so I loved the idea of forgiveness.”
And then, of course, there was De Niro.
“When I watched the playback after a scene, I couldn’t believe I was on the same screen as Robert De Niro,” she says. “I was just beside myself.” More than two decades into her career, working with one of the most celebrated actors alive was enough to bring back that old feeling of imposter syndrome. She still feels it, she tells me.
There’s something reassuring about that: that the nerves never completely disappear — even for a seasoned actor.
Maybe that’s what saying yes has given Monaghan over the years. Not an absence of doubt, but the confidence to move through it anyway. To take the challenging role, board the plane, be present for her family, embrace a new season of life, and trust that there will still be room for her at the table. And through it all, she seems to have found something even more valuable; the clarity to know what matters, the confidence to make space for it, and the wisdom to be fully present when it arrives.
