Rooney Mara Talks Raising Son River in 'Creative Household' with Joaquin Phoenix

Rooney Mara is sharing some rare comments parenting with fiance Joaquin Phoenix.

The 37-year-old actress recently appeared on the 48-year-old Joker actor’s sister Rain Phoenix‘s podcast LaunchLeft where she talked about taking on her first role in Women Talking since welcoming son River, 2.

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“This was sort of my first job that I had done as a mother, and so it was a really important experience for me because I wasn’t really sure if I could work, if I can do both,” Rooney said. “I still don’t know, but [director] Sarah [Polley] made it possible on this, that we were working 10-hour days.”

Rooney went on to say that she got lots of motherhood advice from her co-stars Claire Foy, Sheila McCarthy, and Judith Ivey.

“I was able to get advice from Claire and Sheila and Judith and all these moms that I was working with, and River was there on set all the time, in the green room,” Rooney shared. “It was a very idyllic situation, it probably won’t happen like that again.”

Later in the podcast, Rooney said that she always envisioned herself as a mom after growing up with three other siblings.

“My mom had four kids by the time she was 27. So I was like, by the time I’m 25, I’ll be done. I’ll be ready to stop being so selfish,” Rooney recalled. “And then I was 25, and I was like, ‘No.’”

As for if she’s enjoying motherhood, Rooney gushed, “I love it. I love it so much. I think it’s the best thing in the world. I mean, it sounds so cliché when you talk about it, but things are cliché for a reason.”

She then went on to acknowledge how her “privileged life” as an actor makes her circumstances different from other moms.

“Motherhood is very challenging, even when you have a privileged life,” Rooney said. “I’m so lucky that I have the choice to get to be with him most of the time. That I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to work once a year if something feels right and other than that, this is what I’m doing.’ Most people don’t have that option.”

Rooney also opened up about raising River in a “two-actor house” with Joaquin.

“It doesn’t feel like a two-actor house because I didn’t work for the first three and a half years we were together,” Rooney explained. “Basically since we’ve been together, I only worked one or two times and one was really small and short. It feels like a creative household, we’re constantly talking about creative things.”

Rooney and Joaquin first met in 2012 while working on the movie Her. They later co-starred together in 2016′s Mary Magdalene.

They quietly got engaged in 2019 and welcomed River in September 2020. River is named after Joaquin‘s brother who died in 1993.

In the same interview, Rooney revealed which movie role almost made her quit acting.