Chill Lessons From Kristen Bell

If it seems like you’re constantly hearing KRISTEN BELL’S voice – in your kid’s favourite animated movie, singing the theme song of a buzzy documentary, as a character on that hit TV show – it’s true. But we think her voice should be inside your head as well: the actress and mom has some incredible wisdom on dealing with marriage, momspectations and jerks

IT’S MIDDAY ON A THURSDAY IN SUNNY Los Angeles, and Kristen Bell is sprawled out on her bed ‘taking a deep breath’, she says over the phone. For good reason: she’s been in motion shuttling between Atlanta – where she filmed the sequel to the hit movie Bad Moms – and Los Angeles (the daughters she shares with husband Dax Shepard, Lincoln, 5, and Delta, 3, in tow), where she’s shooting the new season of her smart sitcom The Good Place. ‘Simultaneously’ – which is a word Kristen uses often, and for good reason – she’s been doing voice-over work for a bunch of things, but mainly the much anticipated sequel to Frozen, in which she will reprise her role as Princess Anna. She was taping lines for attractions at Disneyland Tokyo this morning before she decided to rush home to lie down. ‘I was like, “I could sit in my car, or I could take the extra 10 minutes to drive home and lie in my bed,”’ she explains. ‘Selfcare,’ she says, her voice only slightly muffled by pillows. ‘I really believe in self-care.’

Which goes some way towards answering the question of how she does it all. But this is not a question I’m going to ask Kristen, because she’s already told me she hates it. ‘Well, I don’t hate it – I hate it and secretly love it, I suppose, because it’s asked with the intention of getting a clear answer, and the answer is, there is no clear answer. Like, “How do you do it?” implies that a) I am doing it, which I am not – I am doing what everybody else is doing, which is trying their best, and b) What is a balance, anyway? A balance teeter-totters. A balance is not stationary – it moves, something gives and other things take, and other days it might be the opposite.’