18 celebrities who have no regrets about not having children

Sezin Devi KoehlerThu, August 6, 2026 at 12:40 PM UTC

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Christopher Walken; Miley Cyrus; Renee ZellwegerCredit: Getty(3)

As the nepotism debate rages on, a number of current stars have opted out of having kids altogether — and made no secret about it. No one will ever be able to blame their children for jumping industry lines.

Given the social pressure women often face to become mothers, being childfree by choice can be something of a bold statement, particularly for an actress. When public figures speak openly about the decision, their comments often become newsworthy in their own right. Just look at how much attention Jennifer Aniston’s reproductive status has gotten over the decades.

The backlash for men is never quite as extreme — although Seth Rogen, for one, received online ire after his frank comments about why he and his wife chose not to have children.

With all that in mind, Entertainment Weekly has put together a rundown of celebrities who have loudly and proudly embraced a childfree life. The outcome may be the same, but the reasons are as varied as they come.

01 of 15

Alison Brie and Dave Franco

Dave Franco and Alison Brie at the ‘Hoppers’ premiere in Los Angeles on Feb. 23, 2026Credit: Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Celebrity power couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco, who have been together since 2012 and married since 2017, made a conscious decision not to have children.

“It’s great, because I don’t worry about when should I get pregnant, between seasons, while we’re shooting [GLOW],” Brie told the Sunday Times in 2018. “It would be nice, but I think of all the things that would be so stressful. I think about how much we’re involved in our cats’ lives. Oh my God, if it was a child!”

Franco joked that there might be a different reason. Have you seen the couple’s codependency horror movie Together (2025)? If not, consider this a spoiler alert. The two play a long-term couple who encounter a supernatural force that causes their bodies to begin fusing together. The closing scene of the film reveals the subtly unnerving final result.

Franco wryly told USA Today, “If that’s what we look like when we’re fused together, maybe that’s further reinforcement that we should not have children.”

02 of 15

Seth Rogen

Lauren Miller Rogen and Seth Rogen at the 79th Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2026Credit: Dave Benett/Getty

While high-profile women often face public shaming for choosing to remain child-free, industry jack-of-all-trades Seth Rogen found himself weathering significant online backlash after saying that he and his wife, Lauren Miller, are happily childless.

Speaking to Esquirein 2025, Rogen went all in: “You should only have kids if you really want kids, and we just don’t really want kids. Time kept going by and the moment where we were like ‘Let’s do it!’ just kept not happening.”

Rogen went even further in responding to his critics, noting, “The most disturbing comment that I saw a lot of was, ‘Who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?’ Which to me is very telling. Is that why you’re having kids? Because I have two things to say: One, that’s very selfish to create a human so someone can take care of you. And two, just because you have a kid, I hate to break it to you, that doesn’t mean they’re going to do that.”

03 of 15

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton in Nashville on March 20, 2025Credit: Jason Kempin/Getty

“I often think, it just wasn’t meant for me to have kids so everybody’s kids can be mine,” America’s longtime sweetheart Dolly Parton told PEOPLECountryin 2016. With her ever-growing résumé of charitable works — much of which involves children’s literacy and music education — Miz Dolly is the fairy godmother we all wish we had.

“I grew up in a big old family with eight kids younger than me and several of my brothers and sisters came to live with me early on in my life… I’ve loved their kids just like they’re my grandkids, and now I’ve got great-grandkids!”

04 of 15

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 26, 2026, in Los AngelesCredit: Kevin Mazur/Getty

Being childfree by choice extends to Parton’s goddaughter, Miley Cyrus, who told Ellethat her concerns about climate change have functioned as birth control.

“We’ve been doing the same thing to the earth that we do to women. We just take and take and expect it to keep producing… And it’s exhausted. It can’t produce. We’re getting handed a piece-of-s--- 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.”

05 of 15

Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken at the ‘Dune: Part Two’ New York premiere at Lincoln Center on Feb. 25, 2024Credit: John Nacion/Getty

Christopher Walken’s decades of cinematic work have become a kind of wallpaper of modern life, spanning musicals and comedies, action movies, and oddball arthouse films. He believes one of the keys to that enduring success, however, was his choice to not have children.

The Guardianasked the Oscar winner in 2013 whether he would have had such a storied career while balancing parenthood, and he was unequivocal: “Absolutely not. I’m sure many of the kids I knew as a child would have continued in show business, but they had kids of their own, had to do something dependable. I didn’t, so I could get by even in periods of unemployment.”

Of course, Walken has played a number of memorable dads on screen, including in Catch Me If You Can (2002), Wedding Crashers (2005), and Hairspray (2007).

In a 2005 interview with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the beloved actor said, “I’m glad I don’t have children. I have two brothers and they have plenty of children, they come to my house and I am always very glad when they leave.”

06 of 15

Pedro Pascal

Pedro Pascal during Paris Fashion Week on July 7, 2026Credit: Neil Mockford/GC Images

This might break a million hearts, but the internet’s “Daddy,” Pedro Pascal, has shown little interest in actually becoming a father. The Last of Us actor acknowledged the online phenomenon during a 2023 Hollywood Reporter roundtable: “Yeah, I am having fun with it. It seems a little role-related. There was a period where the Mandalorian is very daddy to baby Grogu, and Joel is very daddy to Ellie. These are daddy parts. That’s what it is.”

However, he was quick to follow that up with, “I’m not a daddy and (looks directly to camera) I’m not going to be a daddy.”

During a 2023 Wired interview, Pascal offered a more ambivalent answer when asked whether he wanted children: “I don’t know,” he said. After reflecting on his onscreen characters’ relationships and experiences of loss, he joked of himself, “I avoid all of it by not having kids. And staying out of relationships.”

07 of 15

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey at the Museum of the American Revolution on June 17, 2026, in PhiladelphiaCredit: Astrida Valigorsky/Getty

A woman who has defined generations and defied expectations along the way, Oprah Winfrey has spoken openly about her decision not to marry or raise children, despite her decades-long relationship with Stedman Graham.

“If I had kids, my kids would hate me,” the industry powerhouse 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.”

08 of 15

John Cena

John Cena in San Diego on July 25, 2026Credit: Katie Jones/Getty

In 2022, Drew Barrymore said on her show what we were all thinking: John Cena would make a wonderful father. The wrestler-turned-actor was quick to explain why parenthood was not right for him.

“It’s hard work to balance the time I need to run myself correctly,” he told Barrymore. “It’s work to be the best partner and husband I can be to my loving wife. It’s hard to keep connections with those in my life that I love. And it’s also hard to put in an honest day’s work. I think just because you might be good at something, for me, is not a strong enough reason to do that.”

More recently, in 2024, Cena toldClub Shay Shay that he and his wife, Shay Shariatzadeh, had discussed the issue openly and were in agreement. “I don’t want them. I’m 47. I don’t have them… I don’t think I’m personally ready, nor will I ever be, to invest the time to be a great parent.”

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09 of 15

Sam Rockwell and Leslie Bibb

Leslie Bibb and Sam Rockwell attend the 2024 AFI Fest closing night gala premiere of ‘Juror #2’ on Oct. 27, 2024, in HollywoodCredit: Araya Doheny/FilmMagic

Put two great character actors together in a partnership and what do you get? A couple who have decided children are not for them.

One of Sam Rockwell’s first on-the-record comments about the subject came during the press tour for his 2007 film Joshua, in which he plays an embattled father whose disturbed son begins terrorizing his family. “I definitely don’t want to become a parent,” he told The Guardian. “It’s not my bag.”

He partly attributed that outlook to being an only child. “I don’t get children, I don’t quite understand it. I think being an only child means you learn to live in your own world,” he said. “Children are a lot of work. I have so much respect for parents. I suppose the end result is I feel I have too much to do.”

Rockwell’s longtime partner, Leslie Bibb, has also said motherhood isn’t for her. “I don’t want kids,” she said on the Open Bookpodcast. “It’s not a chip I have, and the mom I would want to be, I’m not sure I can be.”

Unlike her partner, whose decision to remain child-free typically passes without comment, Bibb has received a fair amount of pushback.

“Somehow [a woman’s] decision not to have children becomes a reflection of how [she] was raised or her mother’s desire for grandkids,” she said. “It’s so interesting how personally we all take other people’s decisions, and I do it too.”

10 of 15

Mary J. Blige

Mary J. Blige at the 2026 Vanity Fair Oscar party on March 15, 2026, in Los AngelesCredit: Patrick McMullan/Getty

A refrain many child-free folks regularly hear is that they will regret their decision when they’re older. In 2022, Mary J. Blige, then 51, clapped back: “I’m not there yet, so I’m good.”

Blige has a huge family — and has seen firsthand how demanding parenting can be. “I have nieces and nephews forever, and I’m always watching how people are scrambling around for babysitters,” she said. “I don’t want to go through that.”

She was previously a stepmother to her ex-husband Kendu Issaac’s three children, a role she once said she embraced with love.

Ultimately, her choice was simple: “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.”

11 of 15

Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks in New York City on Nov. 16, 2024Credit: Dominik Bindl/Getty

Stevie Nicks is a complicated artist with a fittingly complicated relationship with motherhood. In 1979, while Fleetwood Mac was at the height of its success, she became pregnant and chose to have an abortion.

She told The Guardianin 2020, “If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac. There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly.”

Nicks later said that she and fellow Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter Christine McVie both chose not to become mothers. “If Christine was in this room with me right now, she’d tell you that we both made the decision not to have kids and instead follow our musical muse around the world,” she said. “It’s not my job, it’s who I am.”

“I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy,” she continued. “And I thought: You know what? That’s really important. There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission.”

12 of 15

Renee Zellweger

Renee Zellweger in New York City on Feb. 12, 2025Credit: Dia Dipasupil/WireImage

To many, Renee Zellweger will always be best known for playing a character who famously chooses motherhood despite some strange and charming odds. But the Bridget Jones star has chosen not to have children herself.

Speaking frankly to The Irish Times in 2025, Zellweger said, “To choose not to have children isn’t that exceptional, is it? I think it’s quite common.”

That’s not to say Zellweger doesn’t have kids in her orbit. Her partner, Ant Anstead, has three children that have become part of her life since the couple got together in 2021.

13 of 15

Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple performs during I Am The Highway: A Tribute To Chris Cornell at The Forum on Jan. 16, 2019, in Inglewood, CalifCredit: Kevin Mazur/Getty

Singer-songwriter extraordinaire Fiona Apple loves to read — and that includes parenting books. But it’s not because she’s ever been inclined to have children.

“I’ve never wanted kids,” she told Interviewin 2012. “But I do read about parenting a lot. For some reason it’s very interesting to me — I think because I’m just big on self-parenting.”

14 of 15

Betty White

Betty White at the Los Angeles Zoo on June 20, 2015, in Los AngelesCredit: Amanda Edwards/WireImage

The late, great Betty White blazed many trails during her decades in Hollywood. Arguably one of the most noteworthy was her decision not to have biological children, a choice that, to say the least, defied expectations for women in the 1950s and 1960s.

While she loved being a stepmother to her husband Allen Ludden’s three children, White said in a 2012 CBS interview that she had always been content with her decision to never have her own.

“No, I’ve never regretted it. I’m so compulsive about stuff, I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus,” she said. “But I didn’t choose to have children because I’m focused on my career. And I just don’t think as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both.”

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15 of 15

Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally

Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman in Sydney, Australia, on June 12, 2025Credit: Wendell Teodoro/WireImage

Power couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally never felt a strong calling toward parenthood, though they did try to have a child for a hot minute after meeting in 2000.

“I never had a burning desire to have children. But then I met Nick, and I thought, ‘This is the only person I’d do this with,’” she told GQ in 2017. “We tried for about a year or so, and it didn’t happen, and took that to mean it wasn’t meant to be.”

Neither has expressed regret about how things turned out.

“I feel like, at the moment, there is a loud conservative voice that says, ‘If you’re not contributing children to your voting bloc, you should be exterminated or something,’” Offerman said on the Bullseye With Jesse Thornpodcast in 2025. “But I feel like it’s a very subjective thing. I have three siblings. They all have daughters… I met Megan later, and we chose to be the kids in our household, and it’s been really fun and gratifying, and we have kids in our lives that we can contribute to when we feel bereft in any way.”

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