When the first thing you know someone from is ’90s television, you tend to end up sorting through small, grainy pictures that have probably been kicking around the internet for decades and initially took half an hour or longer to download. That’s just how it is, I guess. No matter how popular the show was, no one puts up new screen caps? I don’t know. I mean, it’s not even as though I particularly liked Ally McBeal in the first place, but one of my college roommates did quite a lot, so I’ve seen a ton of it.

I would honestly really like Portia de Rossi to do something I like. I like her well enough, but I was skimming through her IMDb page and thinking, “But I hate all of this!” It’s unfortunate. I suppose I don’t hate all of it, technically—I’ve never heard of some of it. (Twenty-two episodes of Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher?) I wasn’t great at making the distinction, when I was in college twenty years ago, between “ugh, that show” and “ugh, that person,” but I think Ally McBeal is what taught me, at least in part.

Of course, it’s not going to happen now. She’s apparently retired from acting except future seasons of Arrested Development—and given current issues, I wonder how long she’ll continue to make that exception. I can believe that acting has long been hard for her. In her autobiography, she talks about the eating disorders she suffered from, and she’s quite open about the fact that Hollywood reinforces that even when it doesn’t directly cause it. (And talk to Judy Garland about how Hollywood can cause eating disorders, except you can’t.) She and her wife, Ellen DeGeneres, are not planning to have children, but I can imagine that she’d rather like having a nice, quiet life where she doesn’t have to meet anyone’s expectations.

I mean, she didn’t tell any of her coworkers on Ally that she was a lesbian until tabloid pictures of her with her then-girlfriend Francesca Gregorini were published, and even then, she mostly wouldn’t talk about it, certainly not to the press. And while I certainly don’t think anyone has an obligation to tell the media everything about their personal life, it seems more than a little sad to me to imagine not being able to tell your friends at work, “Yeah, my girlfriend and I went to the movies Friday night.”

So now, she’s not acting. She’s working for various charities. She’s presumably spending time with her wife. And she’s living a life where she never again has to worry about Steven Seagal exposing himself to her, and that’s got to be better all by itself. And why should she worry if other people want her to keep acting? She doesn’t owe it to anyone.

Help support my nice, quiet life; consider supporting my Patreon!