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" It&amp;#039;s a late lunch break on the set of The Closer, the TNT drama that has propelled its star, Kyra Sedgwick, to household-name status. Kyra, who plays sassy Southern deputy police chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, is in the midst of a typical grueling 14-hour shoot. She arrives at an outdoor seating area carrying a neat white cardboard lunchbox. Dropping into a chair, she opens the box and digs right in. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;As she sat down and daintily picked at her salad...&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Kyra teasingly feigns an intro to our interview. &amp;quot;Or, rather, &amp;#039;shoveled her food down as we spoke&amp;#039;!&amp;quot; She laughs heartily. One would think that here, surely, is a woman who has everything she wants. At 43, Kyra has an accomplished and sustained acting career, a much-admired marriage to actor Kevin Bacon (they celebrate their 20th anniversary this year), and two great kids, Travis, 19, and Sosie, 16. But she&amp;#039;s the first to say that her life has taken many unexpected twists and turns. Without doubt, her Golden Globe Award-winning role in The Closer has come as a big (if not her biggest) career boost, but it has also come at the cost of leaving her New York-based family for six months every year. &amp;quot;My daughter, Sosie, cried when I first told her I was going to L.A.,&amp;quot; she confesses. &amp;quot;I cried too. It&amp;#039;s always a big adjustment not being home.&amp;quot; Kyra credits Kevin with encouraging her to take the role; he helms the family duties on the East Coast while she works out on the West. But even as her series heads into its fourth season, Kyra admits that she&amp;#039;s still striving to find that perfect and fulfilling balance between work and home. &amp;quot;There is a yin and yang to everything,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;You may not always get what you want, but sometimes the universe is telling you, &amp;#039;This is what you need.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; How does it feel to have been a part of The Closer for going on four years now? It&amp;#039;s been really exciting and fulfilling creatively to play a character for this long. I didn&amp;#039;t have high expectations when I took this job, because I&amp;#039;d never done a TV series before and the last thing I wanted to do was move to L.A. for six months of the year. But now I have to live with the wonderful success of it all and the bittersweetness of that success \u2014 because success means I&amp;#039;m not home. Has leaving your family gotten any easier over the years? I keep thinking it&amp;#039;s going to get easier and I keep forgetting every year that the first few weeks are really hard. Every year feels so much harder than the last. But my loved ones remind me that I always have this transition time and do get through it. So I keep going. My son&amp;#039;s in college now, but Kevin is home with our daughter, and I think it&amp;#039;s giving them a chance to have a relationship that they otherwise may not have. I think that&amp;#039;s always been the case with our marriage: Because we&amp;#039;ve often worked at different times, we&amp;#039;ve each had this wonderful special time with the kids when the other parent is away.  Did you think about having more kids? We did. I had them so young, and it&amp;#039;s a lot of work for a while, and I think we both thought we weren&amp;#039;t ready for more. He never wanted to have another one, but I was like, &amp;quot;Maybe?&amp;quot; I know Meryl Streep had her last kid when she was 43, and I&amp;#039;m 43, so you never know! You were 23 when you and Kevin married. If your kids wanted to get married as young as you did, what would you say? It&amp;#039;s funny, I think I&amp;#039;m kind of sexist about that. I think if it were my son, I would say he should definitely wait. I think men have more of an urge to sow their wild oats, whereas women can have a couple of partners and then settle down. With my daughter, I wouldn&amp;#039;t want her to marry her first boyfriend, but if it were her third or fourth serious boyfriend, I would think, Why not? I got married young and had kids young and it was fantastic. Did you have a life plan when you were younger? What were your goals? I always had goals. I started working professionally at 16, and I knew I wanted to be a great actor. In some ways that goal has come true and in other ways there is a long way to go. But if someone had told me that at 22 I was going to meet the man I was going to marry and at 23 I would marry him and have a child, I would have told them they were out of their mind. I remember, on one of our first dates, Kevin said, &amp;quot;What do you think of just squeezing a couple out?&amp;quot; And here I am in my 40s with two grown children. Maybe he had a plan, and I followed his plan. Many women have an idea of the kind of man they want to marry. Was Kevin that for you? He definitely wasn&amp;#039;t my type. In fact, I vividly remember looking at his butt when he walked away after we first met and thinking, Well, I guess some girls like that. And now it&amp;#039;s one of my favorite parts of his anatomy! That&amp;#039;s probably too much information! What changes in a marriage over 20 years? Both of our lives are an open book in a way, because we are so boring. We&amp;#039;ve been married for so long and there are no secrets. But I never in a million years thought there would be sides to Kevin that I&amp;#039;m still learning. [Our relationship] is like a treasure; there are layers and layers of it. I&amp;#039;m constantly amazed that we are still surprised and interested in each other. When I look back at our first four years ... by that time we&amp;#039;d had our second kid, and I look back at those pictures and I think, Gosh, I didn&amp;#039;t know him at all! I loved him, but I didn&amp;#039;t know him, and he probably didn&amp;#039;t know me. But you grow together and learn more about each other. I think the trust gets deeper and the dependency gets deeper, which is scary. I think, because my father and mother split up when I was very young, there was a part of me at the beginning of our marriage that thought, I&amp;#039;m cool alone. I love him, but I&amp;#039;m strong enough to handle life without him. But now he is the person I count on to live and walk through life with. It&amp;#039;s a dependency that is there and large and real and profound. How do you handle the conflicts? We always knew that we were each other&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;one.&amp;quot; Both of us knew this was forever and we were going to work it out no matter what happens, so when we fight, it&amp;#039;s not so scary. You can&amp;#039;t be honest with someone if you think that they are going to leave. It doesn&amp;#039;t mean that sometimes I don&amp;#039;t have bad dreams \u2014 which are terrible \u2014 but it&amp;#039;s just a dream. How do you keep each other inspired when things get tough? Kevin is seven years older than me, and he&amp;#039;s a lot wiser than me in a lot of ways. For instance, I can remember struggling in my 30s, work-wise, and he said to me, &amp;quot;We are workhorse actors and we will always be workhorse actors.&amp;quot; It really resonated with me. I thought, Okay, I&amp;#039;m not going to get that mercurial rise. I&amp;#039;m not going to have that thing that&amp;#039;s going to make me the &amp;quot;star,&amp;quot; but I&amp;#039;m going to work consistently. And we both have. How do you give back to yourself on a personal level? I get a lot back from my children. Being a part of their life, spending time with them, and watching them grow is probably the greatest gift I&amp;#039;ve been given. They are extraordinary people. I also have a spirituality that feeds me, and being a responsible steward of the environment is something that has been important to me. I&amp;#039;m really proud of my work for the Natural Resources Defense Council. As parents, how do you and Kevin make sure you also get what you want? I feel the primary relationship has to be the mother and the father, and then it can be the kids. Of course the kids come first in planning your life, but it&amp;#039;s incredibly important to keep your relationship as a couple strong and make time for it. It&amp;#039;s the foundation on which everything is built. Kids should know that your needs are important, because if they think your happiness lies only in them, that&amp;#039;s a lot of pressure on them. Plus, I think if you are pursuing your own goals, it makes your kids want to search for whatever their dreams and bliss are. So, how do you keep your relationship strong? We got help when we needed to be alone. We check in with each other all the time. I think that&amp;#039;s ultimately the best for the kids, because they feel safe when they know Mum and Dad are good, enjoying each other&amp;#039;s company and wanting to be alone together. I think that&amp;#039;s important. It&amp;#039;s a milestone year: Kevin&amp;#039;s turning 50 and you&amp;#039;re also celebrating your 20th wedding anniversary. You&amp;#039;ve said you traditionally celebrate the anniversary with sex and dinner. Same plans this time? I&amp;#039;m sure Kevin would like that plan! I think that no matter what, sex has to be involved. But for our anniversary we would also like to have a party, so we might include Kev&amp;#039;s birthday as well, since they are only a couple of months apart. In The Closer, your character is always getting confessions from people. Are people always telling you things? I think we have that in common. If we had more time, I&amp;#039;d find out your life story and you would tell me things you weren&amp;#039;t planning on telling me. She&amp;#039;s a good listener, and I think I am, too. Does it get harder to think about getting everything you want as you get older? I know I&amp;#039;m not going to get offered all the things I want; I will always have to struggle for them. But there are still great parts out there, and I think I look good and I feel good. So I&amp;#039;m feeling good about that. I have so much to give and so many places to explore. I&amp;#039;m ready. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/friends-family/interviews/a3789/kyra-sedgwick-interview/>