John Corbett has regrets about acting: 'I picked the f---ing wrong thing to do with my life'

Ever since he broke through with a leading role on Northern Exposure decades ago, John Corbett has had a long and fruitful career in both movies and TV. But to hear him tell it, this was all a mistake.

"Look, I'm in the fourth quarter of the football game now, in life and in showbiz. It's just a fact," Corbett said in a new interview on the podcast Fly on the Wall. "So I can reveal now I picked the f---ing wrong thing to do with my life."

Northern Exposure was only the first of many TV series regular roles for Corbett. He might be most famous for playing Aidan Shaw on Sex and the City, a role he has since reprised on And Just Like That, but he also starred as Toni Collette's husband on United States of Tara and popped up throughout Parenthood as absentee father Seth Holt.

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He's also had notable movie roles, such as the father in Netflix's To All the Boys series and the husband in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (another role he recently reprised).

Many actors would kill for a career like that. But Corbett has some complaints, which he aired to Fly on the Wall hosts Dana Carvey and David Spade.

"Have you ever sat in a f---ing waiting room of a doctor's office for like an hour and been like, 'what the f--k?'" Corbett said. "For me, that's what making a movie is like, because I'm not part of any creative process."

As a counterexample to his own experience, Corbett cited Emma Stone. In both Poor Things and now Kinds of Kindness, Stone has been not just the main actor on screen but also a producer and creative collaborator. Corbett hasn't had anything like that, and he's disappointed.

"I've made a lot of money, I live in a beautiful home, people come to me at every restaurant I go in, I'm a friend of the world," Corbett said. "But as far as a fulfilling creative work life, I didn't write one f---ing line. I didn't write one joke that made people laugh. So it's been unfulfilling on that level."

Listen to the full episode at Fly on the Wall, and catch Corbett's return as Aiden on season 3 of And Just Like That.