Life came at Oscar Isaac fast.

In the Spring Issue of GQ Style, the 38-year-old Annihilation actor offers “tons of reasons” for why he finally married documentary filmmaker Elvira Lind in March 2017, a month before the birth of their firstborn son. “She’s Danish—she’s not a citizen, and she was very pregnant, and there was an element of figuring out, ‘Well, where are we going to be?’ and us wanting to be a family unit a bit more. Also, the Danes, they don’t really believe in marriage. I think it has a lot to do with the equality of the sexes over there. Marriage doesn’t mean anything financially, because the state takes care of people,” he says. “The marriage itself becomes less important.”

The actor had other marital motivations. “Right before it happened, my mom was ill, and so I saw her carrying my child, bathing my sick mom…Seeing her do that, I just thought, ‘I want to be with this person forever and ever,'” he recalls. “I just wanted to take that extra step as well.”

Isaac’s mother died a month before he got married.

Admittedly, the Star Wars star tells the magazine, “It was a wild year. I think I’ll be processing it for the rest of my life. There’s a little bit of an untethered feeling since then. A lot of stuff that I felt I knew and had direction about now just feels a little bit disconnected and floating around.”

Isaac feels grounded in Brooklyn, where he’s lived for nearly two decades. “I’m here now for a couple months, and then I think I’ll probably just be here for really three months out of the whole year,” says the actor, whose job takes him all over the world. He’s reluctant to move West, despite the conveniences it offers. “Theater was always super important. I always knew I wanted to do theater in New York. So, L.A. wouldn’t have been an option because of that. I like L.A. But I don’t like myself in L.A. I just feel anxious when I’m there. And I just get annoyed with myself more. It’s not L.A.; it’s me. There are definitely a lot of tempting things about it,” Isaac tells GQ Style. “It’s like the ring in Lord of the Rings—you put it on and you’re like, ‘Whaoo, no!'”

What’s next for Isaac is anyone’s guess. “I do think it’s important to take the time and go back to the well and refill and not just be so concerned with output. I think a lot of it’s just not making plans and doing stuff around the house and normalcy—just quiet,” the actor says. “Those kind of things I find refill me. You can hear things better when things get a little quieter.”