Connie Britton on Being Sexy in Her 40s and Why She Became a Single Mom: 'I've Been Given Amazing Gifts'

Connie Britton is opening up about becoming a single mom, revealing how losing her parents prompted her to adopt her 6-year-old son, Eyob.

"I lost my mom to breast cancer, and then I lost my father three years later. I thought, ‘What am I waiting for?’” the 50-year-old Nashville star shares in the May issue of Good Housekeeping. “Motherhood has been the greatest gift of my life. I have a friend who is very active with orphanages in Ethiopia and he had just come back from a trip where he had been spending time with the orphans.”

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“I was incredibly compelled by the light around them even though they were living in extreme poverty without parents,” Britton continues. “Some of them had AIDS. It made me want to go to Ethiopia and to see how I could help. Right now I've got one kid and there's one of me, and if I find a man who wants to have another child, I'd love to do it. I might do it as a single mom, too."

The actress also gets candid about loving her own body, labeling the idea that women over 40 can’t be considered sexy as “fake news.”

"That whole stigma of being over 40 and not being sexy anymore is fake news,” she says. “We're more vibrant because we have experience, we know our bodies.”

"I don't know a single woman in her forties, who isn't incredibly full of life and sexuality and desire for everything,” the former Friday Night Lights star adds. “There's nothing sexier than life experience, and there's nothing sexier than knowing your own body and having a little bit of experience with that!"

While many fans are still reeling from Britton’s shocking exit from Nashville -- with her popular character, Rayna, killed off in February -- she will soon be back on screen in the film Beatriz at Dinner, out in June.

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Britton notes how proud she was of her TV daughters during the heartbreaking farewell scenes.

"I've had a lot of people stopping me after the Nashville finale aired,” she says. “Obviously keeping it a surprise was the intention. It was hard to keep a secret like that. We've been playing these characters for five years. They are us and we are them. It was moving for us having to say goodbye to each other, and it was also really moving as these characters. Those girls have grown to be such wonderful actresses, and beyond that, we were very close."

See what Britton had to say about the possibility of reviving her Nashville role below.

Connie Britton Is Open to Bringing Back 'Nashville' Character: 'Anything Could Happen!'

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