Anyone who knows Mandy Moore will tell you she’s the nicest person they’ve ever met. Interviews refer to the 34-year-old as “America’s sweetheart” and “ the friend you’ve always wanted.” And while she appreciates the platitudes, they also make her a little uneasy. “I think those particular descriptors prevented me from finding momentum, workwise, because people saw me in one light,” she says. “There’s more to who I am.” Moore was only 15 when her hit song “Candy” debuted in 1999. She toured with *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and starred in beloved teen movies like The Princess Diaries and A Walk to Remember. She wasn’t a tabloid fixture like her peers Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera, which gave her freedom to build her film résumé (Saved!, License to Wed) while still releasing music.
But there was personal upheaval behind the scenes. When Moore was 23, her mother left her father after 30 years of marriage for a woman. Moore discovered the relationship by accident, during a Christmas trip to North Carolina in a plot twist worthy of This Is Us: While setting up a laptop for her mom, she saw an email draft addressed to her. “I thought, Why is Mom writing me?” Moore says. “It was basically her telling us how she had fallen in love with a friend and was going to leave Dad.” It was the family’s last vacation together. Moore’s reaction was to protect her father, but as time passed—and through plenty of therapy—she came to understand her mom’s decision. “At the time I was left with no choice but to compartmentalize what was happening,” she says. Now “everyone is in a much better space, and they’re with the people that are better suited for them. All of that is a very happy ending, but it didn’t come without real struggle.”
What came next: Moore married musician Ryan Adams. “I couldn’t control what happened to my immediate family, but I could control starting my own.” She pauses, then adds, “Not the smartest decision. I didn’t choose the right person.”
Their marriage ended six years later, and Moore was ready for a new chapter. She felt “spiritually and fundamentally stuck” leading up to the divorce, and her career and friendships suffered for it. “I don’t feel guilty for it. I don’t fault myself for it,” she says of the divorce. “When people said, ‘I’m sorry,’ I was like, ‘No. Sorry would have been had I stayed in a very unhealthy situation.’ I didn’t. I found my way out. And when I did, things opened back up again.”
One of those things was This Is Us, which came at a time when Moore felt her career was at a standstill. She plays matriarch Rebecca Pearson, which often puts her at the center of the show’s deeply emotional storylines. “I’ve never been a part of something that means so much to the outside world,” Moore says. “It means just as much to all of us.”
It’s why Moore feels as wowed by the show now, at the start of season three, as she did when it premiered two years ago. “This Is Us has allowed me to show people that I’m not perpetually stuck in the realm of teen romantic comedies,” she says. “I’m a woman now. I’ve been married and divorced. I’ve had ups and downs, professionally and personally.”
Another thing that opened back up? Her love life. She met fiancé Taylor Goldsmith, front man of folk-rock group Dawes, in 2015. (It was a truly modern meet-cute: She posted a photo on Instagram praising the band, and Goldsmith contacted her to say thanks.) “I was still dealing with the trauma of my divorce when we started dating,” she says. “Taylor was steadfast in his support—that was a huge sign for me.” They’ve renovated a home together in Pasadena, and Moore tears up as she talks about getting married “later this year.” “He makes me melt. I can imagine no better partner,” she says. “He’s going to be the most tremendous father. I view the past as a stepping-stone to get me where I am today. I would gladly weather all of that a million times over if it brought me to Taylor again.”
Yes, kids are in the picture, but don’t pressure her about it. “Maybe it’s true [about the biological clock], but fuck that narrative,” she says. Besides, the couple hopes to adopt, “so that will be a part of our lives, God willing.” Moore also plans to return to the recording studio. “I feel ready now,” she says. “I allowed other people’s perception of who I am and what I should be doing and how I should be doing it to permeate my relationship to music.”
Milo Ventimiglia, who plays her onscreen husband Jack, sees how she’s moving past her self-proclaimed “people pleaser” title: “She likes people happy, but she’s not a pleaser,” he says. “She just cares. She truly cares, both about the work and the experience.”
Moore has other goals for the future, including writing, directing, and producing. “If I’m not going to take advantage of the doors that have been opened because of This Is Us to shape the stories that I want to see,” she says, “then what’s the point? After years of not being able to find things that I felt challenged by, it’s really cool to potentially be in a position to find material and help create it.”
Whatever happens, though, Moore thinks her thirties and forties will bring good things. “You give less of a shit about how the world perceives you,” she says. “Now it’s more important to me to be self-satisfying. And I’m better at that. It just comes with time.”
