It was important to me to have a normal life, says Andie MacDowell

Veteran actor Andie MacDowell says had she not stepped away from films, she would have had a career as illustrious as Nicole Kidman's.

The 59-year-old actor, who will next be seen in drama "Love After Love", says she chose to focus on a more "normal life" with motherhood instead of running after film projects.

"I look at other people, like Nicole Kidman and all these people, and look back and think, 'At one point, I was a contender along with these people.' I feel like I lost my juice somewhere along the line.

"I think it was important to me to have a normal life. I don't know that you can have a normal life. It was a sweet idea, and I tried super hard. I lived in North Carolina and Montana, and I did not focus very hard on my career. I focused really hard on my children, and I had this concept that I wanted to give them something normal," MacDowell told Huffington Post.

The actor, who has films such as "Sex, Lies and Videotape" (1989), "The Object of Beauty" (1991), "Groundhog Day" (1993) and "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994), calls herself "super ambitious" but says becoming a full-time mother made her "lose the inspiration" to work.

"I think I'm super ambitious. In getting out of that whole world, I did focus on my children, so there was a positive. They didn't really know that much about what I did. It was not a part of our dialogue, and it did help me to just be a mom.

"But at the same time, it made me lose the inspiration, in a sense, to be more creative in my work," she said.