While we’d all love to only give and receive great advice, we can all probably think of a couple of times when advice from a friend, family member, or even mentor just didn’t land.

For Niecy Nash-Betts and Kathy Bates, who recently joined The Hollywood Reporter‘s Drama Actress Roundtable, remembering the worst advice they’ve ever received was pretty easy, partly because of how bad they were.

To Nash-Betts, who won her first Emmy Award in 2024 for her role in Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, she talked about how she was once told not to marry her wife, Jessica Betts, in 2020.

“Everybody has an opinion!” Nash-Betts said. “There were people who were like, ‘Your fan base has known you to be a certain way, and you need to stay right there. Otherwise, you’ll never eat lunch in this town again.’ Some of that comes from older generations, family members, and that’s how they think.”

“But I’ve always been a person who does one thing: what I want to do,” she continued. “And I’m going to do it all the way. I give very little thought, if any, to what somebody else thinks about it.”

And, as fans of Nash-Betts know, she’s still head over heels for her wife, and surely hasn’t regretted the decision since. “I cannot even imagine my life without Jessica,” she gushed. “This is the greatest love of my entire life. I would not even be able to enjoy my work as much as I do without that kind of support. So I did what I wanted to do. I don’t regret it. I would do it again. As a matter of fact, we are about to celebrate five years.”

Nash-Betts then revealed that she and Jessica, who tied the knot in August 2020, are planning a “big party” as a vow renewal. “Just so I can say ‘In your face’ to whoever told me not to get married,” she said.

For Bates, who’s reaching new heights of TV critical acclaim recently for her role in Matlock, her worst advice was similar. According to her, she too was once told to keep an important part of her life a secret from the rest of the world. Sadly, she listened to it.

“I had ovarian cancer in 2003, and my agent said, ‘Don’t tell anybody. You don’t want to be the poster child for ovarian cancer,'” she remembered.

Looking back, she regrets keeping quiet. “I think if I had come out at that point, maybe it would have helped some people,” Bates said.

Years later, when she battled breast cancer in 2012, she didn’t make the same mistake. “I regret not doing that [the first time]. Because I went underground,” she said. “I was on the board at the Academy, and I called them and said, ‘I can’t come to any of the meetings.’ I just hid for a whole year. So it was bad advice, career and personal.”

Whether they listened to the terrible advice or not, we hope the people who once said these things are listening and regretting ever giving their opinion. May these ladies’ success be proof of that!

Before you go, click here to see movies directed by women you should watch right now.