Kyra Sedgwick: 'I'll Never Step Foot on a Scale Again'

USMagazine, Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 8:51am (PDT)

Kyra Sedgwick admits she's always struggled with her body image."[Food] has never been easy for me," the actress, 44, tells the June/July issue of More magazine. She developed distorted eating patterns when she had to drop 20 pounds from her already slim frame to play a Holocaust survivor in 1985 film War and Love.

"I came back from that and it triggered something," she says. "I ate everything in sight. My weight went up and then too far down."After a year, she grew tired of her mood swings and being so difficult on herself and threw away her scale."I'm so grateful that I don't get on a scale because it's never going to be the right number," she says.

Sedgwick also opens up about losing a large part of her family's fortune to Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme. (According to reports, she and husband Kevin Bacon lost $50 million.)"I laughed. I just couldn't believe it. It's awful, and it's really sad and infuriating," she says. "And there are a lot of people who are so much worse off than we are. He's a sick man...."

Sedgwick discusses becoming a mother at age 23. She and Bacon, 51, made a "spur-of-the-moment" decision to "not use birth control" on their 1988 honeymoon, she says."I got pregnant in two weeks," Sedgwick laughs. "I didn't think it was going to happen so fast."

After Sosie, now 18, was born, Sedgwick entered therapy. (She is also mom to Travis, now 20.)"I used to be so serious. My life was weighty, and my heart was heavy," she says. "When the kids were little, any joke made at my expense, I couldn't handle it. I've done a lot of interior work, embracing my mortality and knowing I'd better have a good time because I'm not going to go this way again." She saw her therapist for nine years. But now, "I embrace my flaws and quirks and can laugh at myself. Having children, you're got to face your sh-t or be ruled by it," she explains.

Sedgwick doesn't want her children to follow in her and Bacon's footsteps."I don't want my kids to have all the rejection and pain and insecurity of this crazy business," she says.She spends six months of the year away from home filming The Closer."Kevin has to share me with more of the world now than he signed up for. He did sign up for an actress, but my life has become bigger, and I've become more independent... he's been home a lot with the kids," she says. "I go to work, and sometimes at the end of the day, I'm too tired to have a really long conversation;To be able to count on someone like that, it moves me."

RELATED ON WONDERWALL:

Spotlight on Kyra Sedwick

6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Madoff's famous victims

RELATED ON USMAGAZINE.COM:

PHOTOS: The most discussed star bodies

VIDEO: Find out which celeb wants to gain weight

PHOTOS: Stars as kids

PHOTOS: Stars who have become frighteningly thin