How a Cameron Mathison Movie Sparked Jennie Garth’s Spiritual Awakening at 50

For decades, Jennie Garth was the girl on screen—Kelly Taylor of Beverly Hills, 90210, forever frozen in our collective memory as the blonde teenager caught in a love triangle. But the woman who sat down on the What Matters with Liz podcast is something far richer: an introspective, hard-won 50-something who has finally learned to choose herself.

And surprisingly, one of the unlikeliest catalysts for that transformation came on a film set in Canada — opposite a Hallmark Channel leading man whose calm, light energy she simply could not stop staring at.

The costar she couldn’t stop watching

Garth was shooting a movie with actor Cameron Mathison when she noticed something different about him. He was, as she described it, “always so happy and so calm.” She found herself studying him between takes — long enough that, by her own admission, “it got a little weird.”

Finally, she just asked.

“What is your deal? Like what? Why are you like, why are you the way you are? I want that whatever you have, I want that,” Garth recalled telling him.

Mathison’s answer surprised her. He told Garth he practiced Buddhism in Los Angeles, and that he believed it was “a real cornerstone of his grounding of himself” — the way he carried himself through life.

That single conversation, on a Hallmark movie set of all places, would crack open a door Garth didn’t even know she’d been looking for.

A quiet pull toward something deeper

Garth didn’t just nod politely and move on. She went home and started studying — at the same temple as Mathison, in the Silver Lake neighborhood of California.

“It resonated with me,” she told What Matters With Liz. “I’ve always been a spiritual person, whether it’s angels, whether it was God, whether whatever it was, energy, the universe, all the things. I was raised Christian, went to Bible school, you know, read the Bible, did all the things, and Buddhism spoke to me.”

The specific tradition she found, she explained, is Kadampa Buddhism — “a form of modern-day Buddhism.” That accessibility was key for a working mother of three in her 50s.

“It’s really easy to apply to your modern-day experiences,” Garth said. “It’s not so like out there that you have to sit on a mountain in a monk suit. You know, it’s something that’s attainable for all of us.”

For women in midlife who’ve quietly wondered whether there’s something more — without wanting to upend their entire lives to find it — that distinction matters. Garth wasn’t running off to a retreat. She was sitting in a temple in Los Angeles, taking notes, and bringing the lessons home.

The practice that reshaped her daily life

The teachings, Garth said, “changed how I show up in the world. They changed how I think.” And they became deeply intertwined with another practice she’d taken up at the urging of one of her therapists: journaling.

“I would go to the class and write down everything that the teacher would say, and now I’m able to go back and look at it and just remind myself,” she said — especially “when I’m kind of going off alignment, when I’ve stopped meditating, you know, when I’m not right in the pocket.”

That phrase — right in the pocket — captures something so many women in their 40s, 50s and 60s recognize. The quiet sense that life can feel a little off-key. That busyness has crowded out meaning. That the inner voice has gone hoarse from being ignored.

Garth credits her practice with giving her the tools to come back to herself, again and again.

“I really attribute a lot of my calm energy, a lot of my just being able to sit with myself to Cameron Mathison and to Buddhism,” she said. “Thank you.”

Why ‘I Choose Me’ hits different at 50

The spiritual awakening dovetailed with the larger reckoning Garth describes in her new book, I Choose Me:Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose & Embracing Reinvention. The title, of course, comes from Kelly Taylor’s iconic 1995 line on Beverly Hills, 90210 — a line written by Jessica Cline that, at 22, Garth delivered without truly understanding.

“I didn’t really even know how deep that statement was until I was in my early 50s, honestly,” Garth told What Matters With Liz.

What changed? She slowed down.

“I started to slow down enough to connect with the things in my life so far that had made me, molded me into who I am,” she said. “I looked at all the past triumphs and all the past failures. And I really started to really self-reflect on how I got here. And also where the hell do I go next?”

That kind of reflection, she acknowledges, is uncomfortable. “Quiet is scary,” she said. “Quiet isn’t what happens when there’s momentum.” For most of her adult life, momentum is exactly what carried Garth — no plan, no big goals, just one role, one relationship, one obligation flowing into the next.

It took deep, sometimes painful inner work — including intensive therapy after her divorce from her daughters’ father — to choose differently.

From busy to aligned

One of the lines from Garth’s book that lingers most for women in midlife is this: “I didn’t want to just be busy, I wanted to do something where I felt aligned.”

Many women equate busy with worthy. Garth wants us to question that.

“You don’t really get aligned until you feel out of alignment,” she said, “and you’re able to recognize it. And now I actively choose to accept help from myself like my inner aligned self that I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t know she even existed if I hadn’t gotten quiet and listened.”

That alignment now shapes everything from her podcast to her partnership with QVC’s “Age of Possibility” platform, where she champions the message that life begins at 50.

“Now is our time to shine,” Garth said of women over 50. “We’ve done the work. We’ve raised the kids. We’ve, you know, served our husbands or whatever our experience has been. Others, others, others. Now is the time that it’s okay. It feels necessary for us to give back to ourselves.”

Aging isn’t being. It’s becoming.

Perhaps the most quotable line in the entire conversation — and one Garth writes about in her book — is this: “Aging isn’t being. It’s becoming.”

“I feel like every day I’m becoming a new or better version of myself,” she told What Matters With Liz. “Some days I’m becoming, you know, a hot mess again.” But then, she said, “you remember that tomorrow’s a new day. I can start over. I can realign with myself. My vision for what I want in my life next.”

For midlife women still asking what’s next? — empty nesters, the newly divorced, the career-shifters, the simply restless — Garth’s message is a permission slip.

“It’s time for you to take control, take the reins, and start choosing to trust your instincts,” she said. “We can always choose ourselves. And it’s not selfish — we need to do it.”

Sometimes that journey starts in therapy. Sometimes in a journal. And sometimes, it starts on a Hallmark movie set, when you finally turn to the calm guy across from you and ask: What is your deal?

What Matters With Liz airs every Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts, with highlights and behind-the-scenes clips shared on Instagram and Facebook.

Copyright 2026 A360 Media

This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 2:00 PM.