Leslie Bibb opened up about her relationship with Sam Rockwell, detailing the pair’s thoughts on marriage.
While cohosting TODAY With Jenna & Friends alongside Jenna Bush Hager on Monday, June 16, Bibb, 51, discussed a news article offering statistics on the rise in women choosing not to marry their partners.
“Listen, you’re speaking to the choir. I mean, listen, I love Sam Rockwell, I would put him in my pocket and carry him with me all the time, I love him. I do not want to get married,” Bibb told Hager, 43. “I feel like we are married.”
Hagen then asked Bibb whether Rockwell, 56, wanted to marry Bibb “in the beginning” of their relationship, which began 18 years ago.
“No … and then he would annoy the crap out of me because he was like, ‘Really? You don’t want to get married?’ [and] I was like, ‘Stop saying it, I already said I don’t want to marry you. Stop asking me like I’m going to pull, like, a sneak on you. But he didn’t want it either,” Bibb responded.
The White Lotus star continued, “I mean, I don’t know, maybe it’s probably something about the way we grew up but I feel like, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Hager, who married businessman Henry Hager in 2008 and shares three children, Mila, 12, Poppy, 9, and Hal, 5, with him, then offered her own thoughts on the topic. “You can still have a fulfilling, long relationship,” she said — to which Bibb agreed “100 percent,” — before asking Bibb if she wanted children of her own.
“No, I just don’t have that chip in me, “ Bibb answered. “One woman said to me, ‘You’re not a real woman unless you have a kid and I was, like, ‘OK, you don’t know the reason … if I can’t have kids, if I don’t want kids.’ I think being a mother is an amazing aspect of being a woman and I really … think it’s the hardest job and what women do, the balance … it’s just not in me.”
Rockwell and Bibb met in the lobby of West Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont in October 2007 when Rockwell was filming Frost/Nixon and Bibb was waiting to dine with friends.
They’ve appeared in a string of films together, including 2010’s Iron Man 2, 2015’s Don Verdean and 2017’s The Dark of Night, as well as the season 3 of The White Lotus which saw Rockwell appear in a reoccuring cameo role opposite Bibb in a leading role.
