NEWSMary-Louise Parker Plans Fun Vacations For Kids
Oct. 12 2011, Published 12:00 p.m. ET
Mary-Louise Parker is such a hands-on parent she worries about vacationing without her kids. She's only taken a trip twice without them, and secretly surfs the web in the middle of the night in search of the perfect getaway.
“The Four Seasons website is my porn,” the Weeds star, 47, says this week during the Conde Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards held in NYC. “I can be found at 1 in the morning clicking on hotels in the dark. I click on Bora Bora, Seychelles and Maldives – there’s two in Maldives, it’s beautiful. I really want to go so badly. The beds are delicious and the bathrooms are pristine and elegant, and there’s always some little extra something that makes you want to go back.”
It’s no wonder she dreams of the hotel chain. The last time she stayed there, she had an unforgettable time with her son William, 7, whose dad is ex Billy Crudup, and daughter Ash, 4, who is adopted.
“I went to the Four Seasons in Nieves last year, and that was really amazing,” she says. “That hotel is really beautiful, and they were so nice. Honestly, I felt like everyone who works there –and I worked in the service industry – sometimes there’s this quiet hatred towards people that you’re working for, but they just all seemed so happy to be there. They loved their jobs. It just made the trip different. They were so lovely to my children. It’s not a good vacation for me if my kids aren’t having a good time.”
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Most recently, though, she loaded her kids up for a good old-fashioned road trip.
“I just love planning trips for them,” she says. “I just took them across the country in an RV. It was amazing. We went to truck stops and camped in an RV. The kid on my show, Hunter Parrish, who plays my son, his parents – his father drove, and his mother’s a good friend of mine, too. It was just his parents, my kids and me. It was wonderful.”
How’s this for super mom? Just before she presents an award at the event, she baked six pies after picking apples all day.
Indeed, her children put a smile on her face.
‘Today my son ran after me at the apple tree, and he said New York accent ‘here sweetheart, let me carry your apple bucket, my little Gummi Worm,’” she tells me. “He’s so romantic.”
