Julianne Moore Reveals the Secret to Her 16-Year Marriage to Bart Freundlich: ‘Make Time’

Actress Julianne Moore is not trying to discover the secret to a long and happy marriage because she already has one! While recently speaking to People, she revealed the sweet secret to her 16-year marriage to husband Bart Freundlich and said that it has a lot to do with hard work and dedication.

“We have this narrative in our culture that if you want a career, you have to work hard, go to school, look for a job, you have to apply yourself but love is supposed to just happen to you,” Julianne, 58, explained. “One day you’re going to meet someone and get hit over the head and boom! That happens in romantic comedies but in real life you have to make time. When you find a person, you have to invest in them and that relationship. And that’s what love is.”

In the time that they have spent together, Julianne and Bart, 49, have welcomed two beautiful kids together. They are proud parents to Caleb, 21, and Liv, 16. “It was pretty unexpected,” Julianne recalled about her and Bart’s “growing” love story. “It kept going, and now we have this huge history together,” she gushed. “It’s true — that thing about love growing. It does and it gets way better.”

Tying the knot with Bart has taught Julianne why it’s important to get legally married to the person that you love. “It’s a way of saying to the world, ‘I’m legally committed to this person and I’m going to make this container for the two of us, and then our children, and our life together,'” she said. “A container for a family and that’s why legal marriage is important — that everyone be allowed to be married, every couple.”

And after 16 years, the Still Alice star says her marriage is doing well. “Our container is pretty good,” she added. “It’s not airtight but it’s pretty good, especially now having one child [Caleb] who is 21, who is almost finished with college and then another [Liv] who will go to college in two years, you think, ‘Wow we did it!’ We are intact and we are happy.”