She left the Hollywood scene for goats, chickens and quiet. Then her career hit its biggest high yet.
At 18, she was Karen in Mean Girls. Then came Mamma Mia!, Dear John, and Les Misérables.
But while her career kept climbing, Amanda Seyfried kept stepping away from the Hollywood lifestyle. She left Los Angeles, then New York City, and ended up on a farm in upstate New York.
Plenty of people would have expected her career to fade after that. Here’s what happened instead.
The Anxiety Nobody Saw
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The full story goes back to when Seyfried was 19.
Her anxiety had gotten so bad that she was sure she had a brain tumor. She got an MRI. It was clear, and the neurologist sent her to a psychiatrist.
The diagnosis was obsessive-compulsive disorder. She has described it as “really extreme.”
She started a low dose of the medication Lexapro. In 2016 she told Allure, “I’m on Lexapro, and I’ll never get off of it.” She said she saw no point in fighting a stigma just to stop using a tool that worked.
Here’s something most fans don’t know. She has said the OCD actually kept her away from Hollywood’s party scene. She would make plans and then not go. “I gotta give credit to my OCD,” she told People in 2026.
Even then, she didn’t want the life that usually comes with fame.
“So, I Bought a Farm”
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Seyfried watched what fame did to some of her peers. She told Marie Claire that they started believing they needed assistants and that their whole world had changed.
“So, I bought a farm,” she said.
She bought it in 2014, years before she had kids. Marie Claire reported it sits on nearly 30 acres, with chickens and goats.
“Staying here was the best decision for privacy, peace and nature,” she later told Forbes.
The quiet life also led her to love. Around 2015, she met actor Thomas Sadoski when they starred together in her first Off-Broadway play, The Way We Get By. They married in 2017 and have two kids, Nina and Thomas.
Living out there also gave her room to say things most stars kept quiet.
The 10 Percent Problem
In July 2015, Seyfried told Britain’s Sunday Times something that shocked people.
On one of her big-budget films a few years earlier, she found out she was being paid 10% of what her male co-star got. She said the two of them were pretty even in status.
She never named the movie or the actor. But she named what bothered her. “It’s not about how much you get, it’s about how fair it is,” she said.
She also admitted she thought people assumed she’d take whatever they offered, because she was easygoing.
Being easygoing was costing her money. Then her career took a turn nobody expected.
A Quiet Life, a Louder Career
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In 2021, Seyfried earned her first Oscar nomination. It was for playing actress Marion Davies in David Fincher’s Mank.
She has said that role changed her career in a good way. It opened up much bigger parts for her.
The biggest one arrived fast. Hulu was making The Dropout, about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Kate McKinnon had been set to star, but she left the project in February 2021.
Seyfried told Marie Claire she got the call about The Dropout the same day she got her Oscar nomination.
She almost said no. She had COVID, and she hated the idea of leaving her kids to film in Los Angeles. She slept on it, and she said yes.
She worked on Holmes’s famously deep voice while living on her farm.
The Payoff: The Emmy She Never Pictured
The Dropout premiered in March 2022. Critics called it her best work.
That July, she got her first Emmy nomination. On September 12, 2022, she won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for playing Elizabeth Holmes.
She won the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice Award for the role too.
“I didn’t ever picture myself holding an Emmy,” she later told Vogue Hong Kong.
The actress who chose chickens and goats over the Hollywood party scene had won TV’s top acting award. And she did it while living on the farm she’d bought to escape all that.
Her Busiest Year Yet
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Some people expected her to slow down after that. Instead, 2025 turned into her biggest year yet.
She starred in the Peacock limited series Long Bright River. She played opposite Sydney Sweeney in the thriller The Housemaid. And she played Shaker leader Ann Lee in The Testament of Ann Lee, a musical drama that premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
She told NPR she trained on and off for a year to get Ann Lee’s intense dance movements right.
Critics called that role “career-best.” She earned two Golden Globe nominations in a single year, for Long Bright River and The Testament of Ann Lee.
After all that, she flew home on a red-eye and told NPR she slept for about 30 hours.
The Takeaway
Seyfried never had to pick between her peace and her career. Choosing peace first is a big part of why her career grew.
Sometimes stepping back from the noise is what lets you do your best work.
