Mena Suvari has finally grown up, says Stephanie Trong in Page Six Magazine. Raised in an affluent family in Rhode Island, the 28-year-old actress says her upbringing was so sheltered, she never even learned how to take out the garbage. Then, soon after achieving stardom in 1999’s American Beauty, the then-21-year-old married cinematographer Robert Brinkmann, 17 years her senior. During that marriage, which lasted five years, she remained insecure and dependent. “I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t capable of doing things,” she says. “I felt as if I were waiting for someone to validate me.” After her divorce, she moved into her own home for the first time and began to see herself as an individual, not as someone’s wife or daughter. “I’ve gotten to the point where all the love that I need, all the support that I need, the confidence, I can give myself. It’s empowering and freeing.” She also takes great pride in her ability to accomplish such tasks as building her own bookcase or hanging her own holiday decorations. “One year I was like, ‘I am going to put up those damn Christmas lights outside by myself.’ My guy friends would ask, ‘Can I do that for you?’ and I’d be like, ‘No! I have to do this, because to me it’s an accomplishment.’”
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