Why Amanda Peet Has Disappeared From Hollywood

In April 2022, a query on Twitter went viral which read, "If you know who this is, like this tweet. We're settling a debate about whether or not she is 'super famous.'" It was accompanied by four pictures of an actor who — 20 years ago — would have been pretty much recognizable straight away.

Indeed, Amanda Peet was barely off our screens in the '00s, starring alongside A-listers like Bruce Willis ("The Whole Nine Yards"), Ben Affleck ("Changing Lanes"), and Ashton Kutcher ("A Lot Like Love"); working with Woody Allen ("Melinda and Melinda"), Roland Emmerich ("2012"), and Nancy Meyers ("Something's Gotta Give"); and enjoying recurring roles in dramedies like "Jack and Jill" and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."

But Peet's last film credit was in the 2015 rom-com "Sleeping with Other People," which perhaps explains why some younger cinema-goers responded to the aforementioned tweet with a shrug of the shoulders. That said, the star has continued to work both in front of and behind the camera during the past decade — here's a primer of exactly what she's been up to.

"The Chair" might have been Amanda Peet's first effort as a TV showrunner, but she'd already had plenty of experience writing for the stage. In 2013, she penned "The Commons of Pensacola," an off-Broadway play starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner.

Five years later, Peet once again proved she was a multi-talent by writing the Geffen Playhouse production, "Our Very Own Carlin McCullough," the story of a prodigious tennis player who gets stuck in the middle of her warring mother and coach. Peet was inspired by both the relationship she had with a camp counselor as a teenager and the court skills of her nephew and niece.

Peet told Backstage that working behind the scenes had given her a new outlook on her day job: "Maybe I'm a little less precious. I've been lucky enough to find a job elsewhere, so if I suck at something as an actor, I can always try writing, and having that safety valve is great. On the other hand, I've chosen something that's equally cutthroat!" But it's fair to say that she didn't enjoy the playwriting experience her second time around: "This one was much harder. It's taken me twice the amount of time. I don't know all the reasons why, but I think it just sucked for a really long time."

Amanda Peet might not have appeared on the big screen since "Sleeping with Other People," but she's been much more visible on the small one. She took main roles in "Brockmire" and "Togetherness," had a recurring stint on "The Good Wife," and guested on "The Romanoffs." While those parts were memorable in their own right, her most impressive latter-day performance has undoubtedly been in the second season of "Dirty John."

Peet played Betty Broderick in the true crime adaptation, the real-life woman sentenced to at least 32 years in prison after killing both her ex-husband Daniel and his wife Linda in 1989. In a chat with Forbes, the New Yorker said she believed she was stepping into the shoes of a clear sociopath: "She murdered the father of her children so you have to have those tendencies in order to do that. What scared me was that she had no remorse for the murders, or at least claims not to have any. That definitely scared me."

However, Peet was also glad that the show didn't present Broderick as a one-dimensional villain: "[Showrunner Alexandra Cunningham] wanted to explore the ways in which Betty was not crazy, to actually bring to the foreground the ways in which she actually stayed sane for a while in the face of horrendous adversity and humiliation."

Channing Tatum, Hilary Duff, and Kelly Clarkson are just a few of the celebrities who have made the unlikely pivot into children's books over the years. And Amanda Peet added her name to that list in 2015 with a festive story titled, "Dear Santa, Love Rachel Rosenstein."

Co-penned with one of Peet's best friends, Andrea Troyer, the picture book sees the titular Jewish character embark on a mission to bring Father Christmas to her home without her parents' knowledge. But after trying to track down the man whose belly shakes like a bowlful of jelly at the mall and writing to him at the North Pole without much luck, the youngster begins to recognize how special her own traditions are.

Peet was inspired by her kids Molly and Frankie, and their queries about the lack of Christmas trees, cookies, and lights in their own household, as she explained in a Doubleday Books statement [via Bustle]: "The book came out of a desire to capture the feeling of being left out during the Christmas holidays and to explain how you can't always get what you want — and how sorting that out, for Jews and Gentiles alike, is part of what the holiday spirit is all about." Further embracing the season of goodwill, Peet donated a percentage of the book's profits to the nonprofit Seeds of Peace.

Unlike many of her peers who are more than happy to go under the knife to continue grabbing those magazine front covers, Amanda Peet has no desire to dramatically alter her face. In a revealing letter she penned for Lenny, the actor claimed she will never use plastic surgery or Botox as a way to stay youthful.

However, Peet is not entirely averse to using less extreme methods to knock a few years off: "I've bleached my teeth, dyed my hair, peeled and lasered my face, and tried a slew of age-defying creams. More than once, I've asked the director of photography on a show to soften my laugh lines. Nothing about this suggests I'm aging gracefully."

In fact, the only reason Peet won't resort to more radical procedures is the fear that her vanity will be exposed to the general public: "I'm afraid one visit to a cosmetic dermatologist would be my gateway drug. I'd go in for a tiny, circumscribed lift and come out looking like a blowfish. Or someone whose face is permanently pressed up against a glass window. Or like I'm standing in the jet stream of a 747. What's the point of doing it if everyone can tell? I want the thing that makes me look younger, not the thing that makes me look like I did the thing."

Amanda Peet will still gladly attend the odd premiere. See the night she joined her showrunner husband David Benioff for a screening of "Game of Thrones," for example. Or the time she posed for photos at the Westwood Village Theatre to help promote the Amy Schumer comedy, "I Feel Pretty." But in general, it seems as though the actor considers the glitz and glamor of such events as passé.

In 2020, Peet and her BFF, "American Horror Story" regular Sarah Paulson, were asked by InStyle whether they missed stepping out of a limousine and posing for a cavalcade of photographers. While the latter admitted she does enjoy the process of playing dress-up for the occasion, the former was less enthusiastic: "The red carpet can still be intimidating, but it's just not as important to us as it used to be."

Even when Peet does make the effort, she's not always credited for doing so. The "Gulliver's Travels" star explained, "About a year ago I got out of the car in full hair and makeup, and as I took my fancy red-carpet stance, people yelled, 'Lake Bell! Lake, over here!' Part of me was really excited because she's so hot. But then I was like, 'Wow, I feel bad for her that this is happening to me.'"

Amanda Peet's early film career is littered with films whose Rotten Tomatoes rating has only just made it into double figures. See "Body Shots," "Whipped," and "Simply Irresistible" for just three examples. But now that she's decided to take much more creative control over her career, the actor can afford to be a little choosier with her roles.

In an interview with The AV Club, Peet explained how she now decides she wants to take on a project: "When you're not panicking, and when you're really thinking of, hey, when my alarm goes off at 5:20 in the morning, 'Are these the words that I want to be saying? And is this the story that I want to be telling? And is this the set that I want to be on?' And it eliminates a lot of things."

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 2020, Peet admitted to some regrets about her resume. Referring to her writing ability, the "Togetherness" star said, "I also feel like I wouldn't have done some of the lousy stuff that I did because I would have realized that there were other resources at my disposal. I didn't have to play that wife role or that role in the unnameable movie that I won't name. I could have been writing instead of doing that. I think there was a period of time in my 20s where I was definitely chasing the hype instead of doing my work."

As well as revealing her aversion to plastic surgery in the candid letter she penned for Lenny, Amanda Peet also admitted to feeling like she's fallen several rungs down the Hollywood ladder as she's gotten older. And there's one particular star who the actor believes she's been pushed down by.

Yes, after disclosing that she recently lost out on a role because she wasn't current enough, Peet mentioned Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander as someone who blatantly is. The New Yorker explained, "You might think, 'Wait, she's 27 and a gorgeous movie star, and you're 44 and a low-tier, TV-mom-type; you're not in the same ballpark.' But she is squeezing me out. She's in the hot center and I'm on the remote perimeter."

Peet then used another analogy to describe the gulf between herself and the "Tomb Raider" star: "The train has left the station and I'm one of those moronic stragglers running alongside with her purse caught in the door. Everyone's looking at me like, 'Let go, you bullheaded old hag! There's no room for you.'"