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"  Seated at a wooden table in her favorite breakfast spot on New York City&amp;#039;s Upper West Side, Kyra Sedgwick is having a senior moment. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m 46...,&amp;quot; she says, looking down at her lap while doing some mental arithmetic. &amp;quot;I think I&amp;#039;m 46? Don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;m 47 yet. How old am I? You must know!&amp;quot; For the record, she is 46, but you can&amp;#039;t blame Kyra for spacing on her age when she looks this incredible. In recent paparazzi shots taken in Hawaii, her lean, tattooed body appears positively gravity-defying. And today, she&amp;#039;s radiant in a clingy long-sleeve gray top and jeans, with nothing more on her dewy face than a hint of mascara. As we get to talking, it becomes clear that the star doesn&amp;#039;t only look young, but she thinks young, approaching everything in her life, from raising kids to getting tattoos, in a charmingly nonlinear way. Last year, she did the unthinkable in Hollywood: After an award-winning, six-year run as acid-tongued deputy chief of police Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT show The Closer, she decided to walk away from the biggest hit of her long career. (Kyra started acting at 16 and is known for her roles in the films Born on the Fourth of July and Singles.) Her simple explanation: &amp;quot;I gave 190 percent every single day on that set. I want to do other things.&amp;quot; First on her list: moving home to New York after spending part of each year in Los Angeles, away from her family, filming The Closer. In an ironic twist, she&amp;#039;s returning to an empty nest: Daughter Sosie, 20, is away at college, and son Travis, 23, won&amp;#039;t be living in the family&amp;#039;s apartment much longer. &amp;quot;[Your children] are the first thing you think about in the morning and the last thing you think about before falling asleep,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And suddenly, you&amp;#039;re fired!&amp;quot; Perhaps the one constant in her life is husband and fellow actor Kevin Bacon \u2014 their 23-year union defies the odds of an average marriage, let alone a Hollywood one. &amp;quot;People say it&amp;#039;s this fairy-tale thing,&amp;quot; she says, shrugging. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s life. We just love each other a lot.&amp;quot; Their bond has held through a few hardships: In 2008, it was revealed that the couple had lost an unspecified chunk of savings to Bernard Madoff&amp;#039;s $50 billion Ponzi scheme. But the actress maintains an almost accepting attitude toward the loss. &amp;quot;When it first happened, Kevin and I talked about it,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And we were like, &amp;#039;We&amp;#039;re not money people \u2014 we didn&amp;#039;t get into this business for that.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; True \u2014 if money were the driver, Kyra would be on the set of The Closer right now, not sitting here in this caf\u00E9 pondering what&amp;#039;s next. &amp;quot;Life is what happens when you&amp;#039;re making other plans,&amp;quot; she says, with that famous spark in her eye. &amp;quot;More will be revealed.&amp;quot; Starting right now... RB: You just shot the final episode of The Closer. Was it a jumble of emotions? KS: It was. One of my closest actor friends, Corey Reynolds [Sgt. David Gabriel], had a very emotional scene. There were 50 people in the room, and I started to sob. RB: Are you a crier?  KS: I don&amp;#039;t think so. When I&amp;#039;m doing the show, all the emotion has to go into Brenda. For the last six years, the work was so emotionally, physically, and spiritually demanding that I didn&amp;#039;t have time to go through my own drama. RB: It must have been hard, being so far away from your kids and husband. Did Los Angeles ever feel like home? KS: After three years of bemoaning my fate about being far away, I&amp;#039;ve learned to love it. I have some family in L.A., and two of my very best friends live there. We actually just bought a home in L.A. RB: Really? Will you be spending time there? KS: No! It was the craziest. As usual, [Kevin and I] are not planners. We thought, Oh, that looks like a good investment! RB: Why did you decide to leave the show right now, at its height?  KS: I never wanted to be unhappy about going to work. I never wanted to be like, Ugh, I have to solve another murder. Originally, I thought it was irresponsible to leave, because of the Madoff thing \u2014 I thought I should do another season. One night Kevin and I were talking about it, and he must have sensed my ambivalence, because he said, &amp;quot;What about, just for tonight, you decide that you don&amp;#039;t want to do another year?&amp;quot; And I realized that I felt so responsible for everybody else \u2014 people count on you for employment. That was weighing on me so much. RB: It&amp;#039;s huge. KS: I felt that weight, and when he said it, I said, &amp;quot;Okay! But just for tonight! I can change my mind tomorrow!&amp;quot; But as I lived with it, it felt so right to me. Really, it&amp;#039;s about wanting to do other things creatively. So, the guilt faded. RB: You had a fun role in the recently released Man on a Ledge. What&amp;#039;s your next career goal? To do more films? KS: That&amp;#039;s my big dream. If something came along, yes. But, honestly, it&amp;#039;s okay to breathe a bit. I have just been working so hard. I want to wait for the right thing. RB: How has your relationship with money changed since you lost so much of it to Madoff? KS: I was angry [when it happened], but I&amp;#039;m a grown-up. I made my own decision. He&amp;#039;s a sick man, and my choices are different today. I used to think, Oh, I feel guilty that I&amp;#039;ve made some money. That is gone. I will tell you that right now. Because now I know that I earned that money. And I don&amp;#039;t feel any guilt about having worked hard for it. I think that&amp;#039;s a common female thing. RB: Women can be strange about money.  KS: Men are more entitled. RB: Did you feel betrayed by Madoff? KS: There are so many people in this country who have been more betrayed than we were. We gave our money to a mentally ill person. We&amp;#039;re responsible for that. It&amp;#039;s not our fault, I don&amp;#039;t blame us, but we&amp;#039;re responsible. Betrayal is something that happens when someone is a friend or a loved one; that&amp;#039;s such a personal feeling. At the time, it felt personal because we&amp;#039;d worked really, really hard for that money \u2014 especially Kevin, who has been working since he was 17 in New York \u2014 and it was mostly his money, because I hadn&amp;#039;t made a lot. So that was our pension. We thought it was in a safe place. But betrayed? I don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s the right word.  RB: What would you say now to women who aren&amp;#039;t totally hands-on with their money? KS: I&amp;#039;d encourage every woman to learn about her money and not apologize for making it. Do I practice what I preach? Do I know every single thing about money now? No. But I&amp;#039;ve made different choices about where I put it. I&amp;#039;ve become more educated about what&amp;#039;s happening with it. I went and took a class. RB: But it hasn&amp;#039;t changed your approach to life? I mean, it sounds like you&amp;#039;re making decisions the same way as before. KS: I think we&amp;#039;re very generous people \u2014 always have been, always will be. I wouldn&amp;#039;t want [the experience] to have the power to change me in [that] way. RB: And this month, you and Kevin are working with the Food Bank for New York City... KS: Nothing means more to me than feeding people in my own city. RB: How did you balance your marriage with six months in Los Angeles and six months in New York?  KS: It wasn&amp;#039;t easy, and it still isn&amp;#039;t easy. Kevin has been working a lot and he wasn&amp;#039;t able to be in L.A. for a lot of the last season. But, you know, I didn&amp;#039;t marry an accountant [laughs]. Everyone has marital struggles \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t buy the &amp;quot;Oh, it&amp;#039;s so hard, actors being married.&amp;quot; Man, marriage is hard for everyone. So when we&amp;#039;re on the red carpet and we get the &amp;quot;How do you guys do it? No one can stay together,&amp;quot; I get really irritated. I don&amp;#039;t think our relationship is more or less difficult; I just think you both make the commitment and you make it work. RB: As far as being a mom and having made sacrifices to work in L.A., so far away \u2014 would you say it&amp;#039;s worked out, no regrets? KS: Yes, in terms of success \u2014 the show was a gigantic success. As far as my family goes, that&amp;#039;s still a work in progress. I think on the face of it, everyone came out pretty unscathed, and yet, we&amp;#039;ll see. It was heartbreaking. Half of me was in New York and half of me was in California. I missed stuff \u2014 events, performances \u2014 but we kept trusting that it was going to be okay. The good news is that Kevin was working less, and he was home during almost the entire school year. But it was really, really hard. RB: How did your relationship with your children change while you were away? KS: It became more special when we were together. I never had that total nightmare with my kids where they wouldn&amp;#039;t talk to me or they were mean to me. Maybe they appreciated me more because I wasn&amp;#039;t around all the time? And I wasn&amp;#039;t in their business every freaking second \u2014 because I am controlling, for sure. Sosie said to me the other day, &amp;quot;Mom, you worry so much.&amp;quot; And I was like, &amp;quot;Does it show?&amp;quot; RB: Do you have empty-nest syndrome? KS: Not at the moment. My son is still living with us, but yeah, he won&amp;#039;t be here for long.... Life will never be the same. I know [my kids] will need me, but in a totally different way. Suddenly I&amp;#039;m supposed to think about myself first? What is that? That&amp;#039;s weird. But there&amp;#039;s joy in that too \u2014 we&amp;#039;re responsible for our own happiness. It&amp;#039;s not about them making me happy. You know, the best sound in the world to me is the door opening in the apartment and one of the kids walking in. That won&amp;#039;t change. I mean, I&amp;#039;m very happy when Kevin comes home too, don&amp;#039;t get me wrong [laughs]. But they light up my life. RB: I know you get asked this all the time, but what keeps you and Kevin together?  KS: [Long pause] Well \u2014 I&amp;#039;m going to embarrass my kids \u2014 sex is important. Sex is really important. That desire is there. RB: But do you have to work to keep up that desire? KS: It&amp;#039;s not a lot of effort. RB: What do you find attractive about him now that you didn&amp;#039;t when you first met him? KS: The essence of it hasn&amp;#039;t really changed. When he walks into a room, I&amp;#039;m still... I mean, my heart gets a little fluttery and I think, Oh! He&amp;#039;s so cute. He&amp;#039;s so hot. That&amp;#039;s literally the first thing I think. You can ask people on the set \u2014 it&amp;#039;s palpable. He&amp;#039;s still a mystery to me. And getting older together is scary and exciting. RB: How did you meet? KS: We met doing a film version of the play Lemon Sky. I vividly remember hearing from my agent a couple days after I got the part that Kevin Bacon had fallen out, that he had to be in New Zealand for reshoots on a movie. I remember this incredibly strong voice in my head saying, Oh, he&amp;#039;s definitely going to do it. So when they called a couple days later and said he was back in, I was like, &amp;quot;Of course he is!&amp;quot; It wasn&amp;#039;t as if I thought we were going to get married. But I do remember thinking, Of course he&amp;#039;s going to do it. RB: And he designed the tattoo we all noticed at the SAG Awards. KS: Yes. It&amp;#039;s a family tattoo, with all of our initials. We were going out to dinner one night in L.A., and we walked past this tattoo place on Melrose and I said, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s eat dinner and then go get a tattoo&amp;quot; \u2014 as a joke. As we were eating, Kev started doodling this image of the four of our initials. Kevin, who always swore he&amp;#039;d never have a tattoo, said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d do that.&amp;quot; So a month later, we had it done. RB: You&amp;#039;re a really cool mom \u2014 you don&amp;#039;t sweat the small stuff. KS: No, I sweat the big stuff. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a13662/kyra-sedgwick-kevin-bacon-the-closer-interview/>