Mary Steenburgen, 73, says she is not haunted by the roles she missed because they led her to the life she has now.

Speaking on Saturday’s episode of The Daily Beast’s “Obsessed” podcast, the actress said she made “a huge mistake” in her career by passing up a role she “probably should have done.”

Steenburgen said he will “never tell anyone” what role it was out of respect for the actor who ultimately got the role. However, looking back, he doesn’t really regret the decision because changing that choice could have changed the course of his life, he said.

“I know someone who is very tormented by the roles that other people, including me, take on, and I feel very bad for that person because, for some reason, I am free of that,” Steenburgen said. “I always have been.”

She said her “strange spirituality” has led her to believe that everything happens for a reason, including the role she thought she should have accepted.

“The truth is, I don’t think I should have done it, because if I had done that, maybe I wouldn’t have met Ted, and then Kate and Alexis wouldn’t be my stepdaughters,” Steenburgen said. “All the ways my life would be different are impossible to imagine.”

Steenburgen married actor Ted Danson in 1995. They have a blended family, with two children each from previous marriages.

Instead of harping on other people’s success, Steenburgen said he’s happy to see actors he admires deliver great performances.

“It makes me sad for people who don’t feel that way,” he added. “It’s not a competitive sport. They do it together.”

Steenburgen said he has a similar view of films that didn’t turn out as he expected.

He always found something worthwhile in the projects he took on, whether it was a lifelong friendship, a lesson he learned or memories he created with his children, he said.

“I’ve made some really good movies and some of them epically good, but I’ve also made some turkeys and I’m glad I made them,” Steenburgen said.

Other actors have also said they are at peace with missing out on career-defining roles.

Before Margot Robbie became Barbie, Anne Hathaway was in an earlier version of the film. In a 2023 appearance on the “Happy, Sad, Confused” podcast, Hathaway said she considers it a “lucky thing” that it never happened because it gave way to the version that audiences ultimately fell in love with.

“They hit the target. And the target made the entire world reach this level of ecstasy. Now imagine that version – so much energy, so much anticipation, so much excitement – but it’s not the right version,” Hathaway said.

Cillian Murphy almost landed the role of Batman in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy before it fell to Christian Bale. In 2023, he told GQ it was “the best.”

“I never considered myself the right physical specimen for Batman. For me, it would always be Christian Bale,” Murphy said.