Shannyn Sossamon Likes To Disappear

Shannyn Sossamon knows you’ve Googled “Whatever happened to Shannyn Sossamon?”

I brought this up with the actor toward the end of our free-flowing, one-hour phone conversation ahead of the release of her next film, “Backspot.” And unsurprisingly, considering an earlier admission to me that she loves to disappear, she had already known people were asking this question ― and she was pretty chill about it.

“Because I’m just living my life,” Sossamon said. “But it also does make sense, too, when I really thought about it, because I was starting to feel anonymous again. I really loved that feeling. I love it so much. I love to just be like, ‘No one’s paying attention to you.’ It’s freedom.”

In today’s fame-obsessed world, it’s not every day that you hear an actor — particularly someone who became a household nameafter starring in cult hits like “A Knight’s Tale” and “The Rules of Attraction” in the early aughts — express that actually, she’s cool not being noticed at all.

It’s not that she’s gone totally off the grid. Prior to our interview, what started as a quick scan of her Instagram page led me down a portal of selfies , art curation , depictions of being a mom , messages about social justice and silly videos of herself . (One caption reads: “Finally got around to making a video of me eating a carrot. Thank you for your patience.”)

On one hand, her Instagram is “an inspiration corkboard,” Sossamon said. On the other? It’s a window into her truth, her own humanity at a given time. It matches how she was throughout our conversation: an aesthete, thoughtful, engaged and able to laugh at herself about anything.

“I feel no pressure, and never have, to paint a picture that isn’t actually me,” she explained. “And that