{"id":51297,"date":"2026-04-15T09:38:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T09:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=51297"},"modified":"2026-04-15T09:38:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T09:38:28","slug":"amanda-peet-says-parents-compared-her-acting-dreams-to-being-a-hooker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=51297","title":{"rendered":"Amanda Peet says parents compared her acting dreams to being a \u2018hooker\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft wp-block-nypost-editor-partner-article-links\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>Amanda Peet\u2019s parents weren\u2019t impressed when she first told them she wanted to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/entertainment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">be an actor<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like they saw acting in the beginning similar to just \u2018Oh, so you want to start modeling or you want to be a hooker,\u2019\u201d she told Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett on the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smartless.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Smartless<\/a>\u201d podcast on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Her parents were \u201cas far from the entertainment business as you could possibly be,\u201d Peet added, explaining that her father was a corporate lawyer and her mom was a social worker and psychotherapist.<\/p>\n<p>Peet said that she also had terrible stage fright surrounding anything \u201chigh brow,\u201d but when she\u2019d audition for anything \u201clow brow,\u201d like a chapstick commercial or a soap opera, she could \u201ckill it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd so then I was undoing what I wanted to portray to my parents,\u201d she admitted. \u201cI\u2019d be like \u2018I\u2019m on a Skittles commercial,\u2019 and they\u2019d be like \u2018I rest my case.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her parents did relent somewhat, she said, with her mom helping her find an acting class when she turned 13.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption>Amanda Peet in the 2003 film \u201cSomething\u2019s Gotta Give.\u201d <span class=\"credit\">\u00a9Columbia Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Peet said she did all the school plays at her tiny high school and was one of the best singers there, \u201cwhich is saying nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then as soon as I got to college, I started \u2014 I sort of walked in confidently to all these auditions, and I never got a single play. I auditioned for 20 plays. It was as if they had already decided, they already had their own clique.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She called herself a \u201cself-hating actor.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption>Peet\u2019s said her parents weren\u2019t impressed when she first told them she wanted to\u00a0be an actor. <span class=\"credit\">\u00a9Columbia Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI couldn\u2019t quite admit that I wanted to do this as more than a hobby,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Once she got into an adult acting class with actor and teacher Uta Hagen, Peet said she finally was able to get an agent.<\/p>\n<p>And amid the excitement of finally getting representation, Peet said the rep walked her over to a corner of the room and told her she had a mustache. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe was saying \u2018Congratulations, we want to rep you,\u2019 she started giving me the lay of the land. And then was like, \u2018And we just wanted to know, so for your, you have a little bit of, you\u2019ve got a mustache, a little bit here. We\u2019re just wondering if\u2026what can we do about that?\u2019 \u2018And boy, was she right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption>Peet and her mother, Penny, during the \u201cA Lot Like Love\u201d New York City Premiere. <span class=\"credit\">WireImage<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Peet told the co-hosts that she tried to get rid of the hair above her upper lip by any means necessary, including bleaching, waxing and\u00a0hair removal cream.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou f\u2014ing name it, I did it,\u201d she admitted.<\/p>\n<p>Peet got her breakthrough role in \u201cThe Whole Nine Yards in her late 20s, and went on to star in movies like \u201cSomething\u2019s Gotta Give,\u201d \u201cSaving Silverman,\u201d \u201cIdentity,\u201d \u201cIdentity Thief,\u201d and she currently stars in the Apple TV+ show\u00a0\u201cYour Friends &amp; Neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She said she has also found a lot of joy in working behind the camera.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption>Her parents were \u201cas far from the entertainment business as you could possibly be,\u201d Peet added, explaining that her father was a corporate lawyer and her mom was a social worker and psychotherapist. <span class=\"credit\">Gregory Pace\/Shutterstock<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cOnce I started writing a little bit, when I was shooting \u2018The Chair,\u2019 which, you know, when I was behind the camera and all the ladies like Sandra Oh had to get there earlier and I could roll in in my snowpants with my mustache and my hair and but still be the boss, I was like \u2018This is f\u2014ing great. What have I been doing this whole time?\u2019\u201d she said on the Netflix show she co-created about the chair of a college English department. \u201cAnd it\u2019s really fun to have last cut, final cut.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The 54-year-old actress also discussed her\u00a0breast cancer diagnosis\u00a0that she received last fall while her parents were in hospice care. Her father Charles died in late 2025 and her mother Penny died in January 2026.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I was very lucky. I\u2019m clear, I did radiation,\u201d she explained, adding that her op-ed in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/the-weekend-essay\/my-season-of-ativan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">New Yorker<\/a>\u00a0last month was the first time she went public about her condition because she and her husband hadn\u2019t told their children right away as they waited to find out how serious it was.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to tell the kids for a while until we knew whether I was going to do chemo and what the course of treatment was going to be, so I wanted to keep it a secret because I wasn\u2019t even telling my children,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/pagesix.com\/2026\/04\/15\/entertainment\/amanda-peet-says-parents-compared-her-acting-dreams-to-being-a-hooker\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amanda Peet\u2019s parents weren\u2019t impressed when she first told them she wanted to\u00a0be an actor. \u201cI feel like they saw acting in the beginning similar to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}