Patricia Arquette Reveals the Parenting Lesson She Doesn’t ‘Feel’ She Was ‘Great’ at (Exclusive)

Patricia Arquette is opening up about where she feels she wasn’t “great” when it comes to parenting.

While chatting with PEOPLE for her new Hulu true-crime series, Murdaugh: Death in the Family, the Severance actress, 57, candidly reveals the one parenting lesson she feels she wasn’t “great” at when it comes to raising her two children. Arquette, who’s a mother to daughter Harlow, 22, and son Enzo, 36, says that it’s important as a parent to normalize having health practices and talk through different feelings, which she acknowledging she hasn’t always “been great at that.”

“I feel like we all make a lot of mistakes. I don’t know if everybody does, but I know I certainly did. I think that we have to really be awake and aware and not get normalized to stuff that’s not healthy and to talk through our feelings and hold people accountable,” she says. “And I’m not pointing the finger at [her character, Margaret Murdaugh], I’m pointing the finger at myself, I don’t feel that I have been great at that.”

The Escape at Dannemora star goes on to share more about her personal upbringing and how that shaped who she is as a mother. “I grew up in a family where there were substance abuse issues with my dad and alcoholism and betrayals, and my dad was charming, and I loved my dad, so I definitely got modeled that, and I saw people that was for my mom to look that way,” she says.

The Academy Award winner shares Enzo, born in 1989, with her ex-boyfriend, Argentinian musician Paul Rossi. They split up amicably when Enzo was 1 month old. During the filming of Boyhood, which took place over 12 years, Arquette welcomed daughter Harlow in 2003 with her then-partner, actor Thomas Jane. Arquette and Jane wed in 2006 and split up in 2009. They reconciled that same year, before ultimately calling it quits in 2010.

Though Arquette has played many roles over the years, she feels her most important one is mom. “The healthy order of things is your children have the most needs, especially when they’re little, and you’re supposed to deal with their needs. It’s not about you,” she told PEOPLE in 2024. “And as you get older, yes, you kind of push them a little more to stand on their own and question things and treat you well, because it teaches them to treat other people outside well. But it’s still not really about you.”

Harlow has since followed in her parents’ footsteps, acting in a handful of projects, including Apple TV+’s High Desert as a younger version of Arquette’s character and joining her father in the thriller Dig.

But Hollywood wasn’t Harlow’s original dream. “I did not want to become another actor,” Harlow told PEOPLE in 2023. “But I couldn’t help but secretly love it.”

The mother-daughter pair also spoke with PEOPLE about their relationship at an Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscars Viewing Party, where Harlow was asked her thoughts on her mom’s work. While she has “seen clips” here and there, “The magic of it isn’t there because she’s just always been Mom, so I just can’t see you as anything other than my mom,” she said.

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“And I don’t ever want you to see me as anything other than your mom, honestly,” Arquette said. “I don’t act for validation. I’m grateful for all the success that I’ve had, but I want to be me authentically, and the only two people in this world that I’m really mom to are you and your brother.”

Arquette went on to say, “I want us to have that relationship without any weird distortion of the world coming in, and what does that mean to other people? I try to minimize that as much as I can in my personal life.”

“The healthy order of things is your children have the most needs, especially when they’re little, and you’re supposed to deal with their needs. It’s not about you,” continued the Boyhood actress. “And as you get older, yes, you kind of push them a little more to stand on their own and question things and treat you well, because it teaches them to treat other people outside well.”

“But it’s still not really about you,” Arquette added.