Amanda Seyfried Opens up About Life as a Farmer, Avoiding Paparazzi & Protecting Her Family's Peace

Amanda Seyfried spends her days feeding her animals, keeping track of who likes which grains and who needs what medication. She also reads scripts, auditions, acts and knows how to work a red carpet but it’s life on her farm that keeps her sane.

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When the Mank star spoke to SheKnows about life on her farm in upstate New York and staying out of the Hollywood bubble, she was visiting the city but still brought her 15-year-old dog Finn with her for emotional support.

“Finn started the whole thing,” Seyfried tells SheKnows of her decision to retreat from Los Angeles in order to find peace in nature and run her farm full of rescue animals from peacocks to a donkey. “The grounding energy he has, and the way he made me feel [about] the weight that I have in my life.”

“The farm just is tenfold. It’s amazing. There’s so much peace that comes in from mother nature in general,” she says. “It really is why I feel sane.”

As Seyfried told The New York Times in 2020, she purchased her farm in the early 2010s, then fresh off major roles like Les Misérables and Lovelace . Since then, she met and married actor Thomas Sadoski and became a mom-of-two — a daughter named Nina born in 2017 and a son, Thomas, born in 2020.

Becoming a mom gave a new purpose to the farm that was already keeping her personal peace intact — privacy and protection for her family.

“Nobody follows me,” she tells us. “When I lived in LA, there was a time when there were paparazzi around a lot and that just doesn’t exist upstate. I don’t have to worry about it at all. It doesn’t have to be a one tiny fraction of an of a thought for me.”

“It’s so much privacy, it’s insane. I love it. I wouldn’t have it any other way and I’m so grateful that they don’t have to worry about that either.”

Her kids are not in the dark about her fame, Seyfried tells us, but distance from Hollywood keeps their family balanced. “They do see me on TV when I’m speaking at award shows and, you know, that’s weird enough,” she says. “So, I think this setup is really ideal.”

Between taking care of her animals and traveling for acting gigs, Seyfried is fitting in time for another animal-focused project, a partnership with Synchrony Pet CareCredit that allows pet parents to pay for their pet care and get insurance reimbursements all in one simplified, unified experience.

“It’s never ending when you’re a pet parent ,” Seyfried says of caring for her animals. “I love having them around and I love keeping them healthy.”

Life on the farm sounds like a full-time job and, in fact, the actress tells us that she does employ a full-time caretaker, but she’s as hands on as she can be while still maintaining a career.

“It’s my it is my job to feed when I’m there,” she says. “I’m the only person who could do it with the flow that I have.” It’s a lot and balancing it, kids and a busy career isn’t easy but she stays focused on the little things that give her joy.

“Right now, what’s really fun is checking to see if there are any little ducklings or little pee hens hatching,” Seyfried says. “My pea hen is sitting on eggs, and she should be hatching them any minute.”

Before you go, click here to find out who fights to keep paparazzi away from their partners and kids