Kristen Bell Talks Motherhood, ‘Frozen’ and More with ‘Good Housekeeping’

Kristen Bell is Good Housekeeping’s latest covergirl and the star chatted with the magazine about life as a mom and wife, what she thinks about her hit animated flick Frozen, why vaccinating children is so necessary and more!

The vaccination debate has been a hot topic, especially among Hollywood moms and Kristen Bell made her stance on the ongoing debate very clear. “I’m very crunchy, and happily so. But there is a lot of scientific, proven information out there that shows why vaccinations are necessary. Kids with autoimmune diseases, kids who are receiving cancer treatments — they can’t be vaccinated because their immune systems [can’t handle it]. If your kid has leukemia, he can’t get vaccinations; if he then goes to school with my kid and I chose not to give my kid vaccinations, I’m putting your kid at risk. To me, that’s unacceptable. There are the weak among us whom we have to protect. As moms, our responsibility is not just to our kids — it’s to all the other kids, too. People often misplace fear. Your child is 100 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to have a severe reaction to a vaccine. That’s a fact.”

As the mother of two adorable kids, Lincoln and Delta Bell Shepard, it’s understandable why Bell would have such strong opinions on the topic of vaccinations. The star also revealed why she feels having children is “unmissable.” “I wasn’t positive I wanted kids. But I can now confirm having them is absolutely unmissable. Before we had the girls, I asked a few people in my life who are annoyingly blunt and honest on every level if we should, knowing that if it wasn’t worth it, they’d have the balls to say, “Listen, don’t. Live your life.” But across the board, everyone said it was unmissable.

“When Lincoln came out, at first I was like, “Eh, what do I do with it? I can take it home?” But when I started breastfeeding, the oxytocin or my hormones or hundreds of thousands of years of evolution kicked in. I didn’t want to let her go. Having kids feels like that first seventh-grade crush that overwhelms every molecule in your body, but it’s permanent. You don’t get free time as parents; Dax hasn’t gone to the bathroom solo in three months, because Lincoln is obsessed with him! But other than the sleep deprivation in the beginning and trying to figure out how not to screw your kid up, the rewards are mountains larger than the battles. Lincoln just started singing her ABC’s yesterday. I left the house and she was singing a sloppy version of it, and I just had a huge grin on my face.”

Bell and her husband Dax Shepard are one of Hollywood’s cutest couples, with Kristen describing them as “the Paula Abdul video ‘Opposites Attract’ personified.” It sounds like it was love at first sight for her husband, however. “I thought to myself, ‘Who is this sparkly creature?” recalls Dax. Since then, “we’ve been pretty inseparable.”

Finally, one of Kristen’s biggest projects to date has been a Disney film you may have heard of…Frozen. “It’s a story about sisterhood, which, whether by blood or not, is this invisible line that pulls you to someone. I have it with my girlfriends; I have it with my stepsisters. It’ll be a special day years from now when I sit my daughters down and show them this movie.”

You can read what else Kristen had to say about her marriage, career and kids in the May issue of Good Housekeeping magazine, on newsstands April 21.

Photo Credit: Hugh Stewart/ Good Housekeeping