Andie Macdowell says she's 'relieved people weren’t cruel' about her gray hair
Andie Macdowell says she was discouraged from letting her hair go gray during the pandemic.
“People kept saying to me, ‘It’s not time,’ but I disagreed," Macdowell, who has said she started touching up her roots at age 40, tells the Sunday Times in a new interview. "I was kowtowing to everybody else’s beliefs, but I truly want to be where I am and look my age.”
And so Macdowell ignored the advice, debuting her graying curls on the Cannes red carpet last year. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, the 64-year-old actress says.
"I was relieved people weren’t cruel,” says Macdowell. “They could have been mean to me. But everybody was very loving and kind and I was relieved because I really like it. I feel more comfortable.”
Though the Four Weddings and a Funeral star has embraced her gray locks, she still struggles to accept other aspects of aging. Last month the former model told People that she's "constantly having to work on loving" her stomach as it's gotten bigger with age. She now admits to the Sunday Times that she'd also considered having a cosmetic procedure to lift her eyebrows until a facialist assured her that "they were sultry and perfect."
An avid hiker who has sworn off smoking and, for the most part, alcohol — "I can feel it in my veins after the first sip," she says — the Maid actress mostly feels good about how she looks. But like fellow 60-something star Jamie Lee Curtis, she limits how much time she spends in front of the mirror.
“Don’t look at yourself in a bad light," Macdowell advises. "I just don’t have very many mirrors around. The ones in my bathrooms all have great lighting.”
The twice-divorced actress also addressed the feedback she's gotten from men about her new look.
"It's better," she says with a laugh. "I might have looked younger and more acceptable to someone before, but I want to be appreciated for where I am, for my age. And the response from men has been, ‘You look beautiful.’ I think my eyes look greener and it has made them pop in a way they didn’t before.”
That said, she's not necessarily looking to meet someone new, and eschews the idea of joining a dating app.
“If somebody came in and enhanced my life, someone I was going to be romantic with, you know, sexual with, maybe," she says. "I would accept it. But to tell you the truth they just don’t show up. And I’m not going on an app. It’s not going to happen. My friends keep encouraging me to be in relationships. But I said, you know what really matters to me right now are friendships. And I’m working really hard on that. And why can’t that be enough?
"I have a lot of girlfriends who are always projecting on to me this missing piece, but they don’t sleep with their husbands. They don’t have sex! I tell them, ‘You’re not even 100% sure that you want to stay with them for ever. What are you worrying about me for? Please have an affair — do that for me!’”
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