Mary Elizabeth Winstead Reveals How She Quit Instagram for Good—and What She Does With All Those Extra Hours
It’s been quite a year for Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The stunning Fargo star appears opposite Will Smith in Gemini Man, which hit theaters on October 11. She also plays Gail in The Parts You Lose. The film, currently in theaters and on VOD, has Winstead portraying the mother of a deaf boy who befriends a mysterious fugitive. It’s a story she was excited to help tell, as it gave her a chance to connect with her former co-star, Aaron Paul, who stars in and also produced the film, and also to give viewers a look inside the world of deaf kids. Winstead admits that portraying the mother of a troubled young child could get emotionally taxing at times. But when she finds herself in situations like this, she reaches into her toolbox of self-care practices to keep herself calm and grounded.
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For Winstead, self-care involves a variety of activities, such as meditation, knitting, playing her ukulele, and limiting her screen time. In fact, she’s become so determined to live her life without being glued to her smartphone that she’s even … drumroll … pulled the plug on all of her social media accounts.
Parade.com caught up with the actress to discuss life without Instagram, her mission to become more present in her own life, and her latest role.
What can we expect from The Parts You Lose?
It’s a beautiful heartfelt coming-of-age drama meets crime thriller. It’s about this young deaf boy played by this great young actor named Danny Murphy who is deaf and just brilliantly talented. The character comes from a somewhat less than great home life where his mom does the best she can. That's the character that I play. And the dad is absent and often unkind. He’s bullied in school and just kind of struggling as a kid. One day, he finds this man lying wounded in the middle of the snow in North Dakota. And that guy is played by Aaron Paul. The boy brings the man to his shed and nurses him back to health. It turns out this man is a criminal on the run from the law. The boy ends up forming this bond with him and keeps him a secret because he sort of felt like this man is all he has, this relationship that he’s started to form. So it's about this young boy and what he's going through and also about Aaron Paul’s character and the fact that he's trying to evade the cops.
Aaron is so lovely. He’s really what drew me to doing the film; him and Scoot McNairy. I've worked with both of them. Aaron and I did a film together in 2012 called Smashed and we just had such a great time on that. He texted me one day and was like, “I'm doing this film. It’s a passion project of mine. I’m producing it as well.” And it was a no-brainer for me to want to be part of it because he’s just a really wonderful person. We actually don't have any screen time together in the movie. So we didn't really see each other at all, but I was just really happy to be able to take part in the project with him.
I also love that this film is a really amazing representation for the deaf community. I think it's a beautiful performance from Danny. And from watching it, you get to see a glimpse of what it's like to live being a deaf kid in that world. It’s also a really entertaining movie that touches you on so many levels. I hope people feel things from it and are also entertained by it.
It sounds like this storyline could get a bit heavy. What do you do to transition out of those somber moods at the end of the day?
I try to stay pretty zen on set for the most part because it can help make it easier to dip in and out of all of these different moods. So I just try to stay really calm and that way, whatever mood I have to go into, I can always come back to that place. It’s not super hyper, super bubbly, but it’s something calm that it’s easy for me to come in and out of.
What else are you doing in this day and age to make self-care a priority?
I really try and stay off of social media and the Internet as much as I can. That’s a big thing for me in terms of calming any anxieties. I think it causes more anxiety than we're probably aware of, being on our phones all the time or watching TV all the time. So I’ve tried to steer away from that. I try to read when I can. I’ve taken up knitting. I play the ukulele. I’ll work in the garden. I like to be outside as much as possible and just sort of be without trying to turn my brain off or run from my issues by zoning out in front of the TV or zoning out in front of my phone. I try to just be present.
Did you notice that there were times where you were spending too much time on your phone? Is that what sparked this?
Oh yeah! Initially I started to back off of social media mainly for privacy reasons. But as soon as I was off of it, it was like this huge wave of relief where I felt kind of a weight lifted off of them. Like, oh wow! I don't have to spend my days scrolling on my phone. I don’t have to be sucked into this anymore. I can actually focus on just living and enjoying my day itself and not focusing so much on what I'm supposed to share or what I'm supposed to receive and take in but actually just live my life.
Is there an extra level of that with being a celebrity where you're supposed to be Instagramming and tweeting about things all the time?
Yes. What I felt was a pressure to be on it because you're supposed to promote yourself. There's this kind of unspoken rule now that we're all supposed to be self-promoting all the time. And I never really fully embraced that. It always felt a little bit weird to me and that it was kind of not cool. I started acting before Instagram and Twitter and it was a different thing back then, but we've all kind of been swept up and I was swept up in it for a while. It was like, OK, this is what everybody else is doing. I'm going to have this many selfies, I've got to get this many likes, I've got to do what everybody else is doing. And then I realized that I had started taking part in all of that without really realizing it and figured out that it wasn’t not moving me. So it felt really good to let it go. And I feel much more authentically me when I'm not on it.
Do you have any good tips that have worked for you on how to stay unplugged? I'm sure the temptation strikes to pop back on from time to time …
I got rid of it entirely and I've been rid of for a couple of years now. I don't have anything. But before that, my way of tapering off would be to delete it from my phone. I would do that often or I would just go OK, I’m not going to have it on my phone for this many days so that I could break the routine and get out of that habit. Because I think that's a real issue—that it’s habitual. We are so used to going for our phones to check our feeds constantly and that becomes part of your muscle memory. It becomes part of your daily activity. So I think to get out of that, you have to break that constant habit to want to check-in. And that at least is something that I think is really helpful if you don't want to fully delete your profile. I think it’s good for everybody to just take a break every once in a while.
So you just pulled the plug on all of them? You don't have any social media accounts at all anymore?
I did. I don't have anything at all anymore. And life without it? I’ve been surprisingly fine (laughs). I kind of expected some people to be like, “Oh you should you should go back on it” or to get some sort of push back, but nobody really cares. So I’m happy!
And you feel calmer and more present?
Absolutely. It’s sort of what I always wanted. I always had a love hate relationship with social media. I was doing it but my heart was certainly never in it. I don't know if anybody's heart should really be in social media, but mine never was. So I always wanted to get rid of it. And I had before. I had actually deleted it before and then I ended up going back onto it. So now I've made the official move. I've pulled the plug. And I never say never. I don't know what will happen 10 years from now. Who knows? But for now, this is really working for me.
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How long have you been playing the ukulele?
I got a ukulele for my birthday last year. So not for very long. Only about a year or so but I love it. It's so nice for me because I can travel with it for work. I'm actually in the car right now on my way home from shooting and I've got my ukulele with me in the car and I’ve got a hat that I’m knitting. I’ve always got something I can do instead of being on my phone. It’s very therapeutic. The ukulele is so nice because music has always been a mood lifter no matter what and knitting is always really therapeutic because your mind is focusing solely on what you're doing.
What's the last thing that you knitted?
In my lap right now, I've got a beanie, which is way too large that I've sort of miscalculated. But I’m still going to finish it. So I'm working on a beanie right now and I've just made lots of different scarves and those kinds of things. It’s a relatively new hobby so I'm trying to get good at it.
My advice to others on the social media addiction is that it’s a hard habit to break. It really is. So that takes some commitment. But it's worth it. At least I think it's worth it! I have noticed that by pulling back on my screen time, I get more done in my day now too. And I have been excited to find all these new hobbies that I’ve picked up that I never would have probably not had time to do had I not created the space for them.
Anything else that you do to cater to your mental health?
I love meditation. I've got a couple of different meditation apps—which is kind of ironic with all this getting off my phone business, that I meditate through my phone—but I still find it really helpful. I have an app called Inscape. I was doing a play in New York this summer and they actually had a place you could go, a meditative space, called Inscape. And you could go to this room and it's like a sphere and you could lay in there and go through guided meditations. I didn't get much time to do it with my schedule, but when I would have some time off, I would try to go in there and just lay down and lay in this big open space and meditate. And so I got the app that Inscape provides.
I also love reading. I love to read books that have elements or backgrounds that are things that I find that mentally calming and create a helpful space to be in. Right now, I’m reading
And what else is coming up for you project-wise?
Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn comes out in February. And then I'm in Thailand right now, in Bangkok, shooting something called Kate, which so far is super fun. It’s a crazy action movie. And I get to do some pretty insane things so I'm having a blast!
Find out what other self-care routines women in Hollywood refuse to compromise on.
