Andie MacDowell speaks to WH about the importance of championing older women
'Isn’t the light so nice!' Andie MacDowell exclaims about my zoom background, in her hypnotic southern drawl. It’s hilarious really, given I’m in my car, parked outside of a pub, on a drizzly Sunday afternoon.
I explain that I’m celebrating a one-year-old's birthday and that, naturally, London parents tend to decamp to their local boozer for a knees up. ‘Oh, I just love that’, she beams, her perfect Hollywood smile framed by cascading silver curls.
You can tell she’s got a soft spot for Brits - and I reckon the feeling is mutual - thanks, at least in part, to our collective nostalgia for the '90s smash hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film that propelled MacDowell to fame and won 24 awards, including four BAFTAs.
Despite already having a budding career before landing the role of Carrie – the charismatic and aloof American in Four Weddings – it’s the character she’s most revered for. Even 20 years on, it prompts a wistful smile from colleagues when I utter the film’s title.
‘I've always loved doing romantic comedies,' she tells me. 'That'll probably be my strong suit until I leave [the industry]…I love comedy – and you know what I really want to do? British comedy. You guys do the best comedy.’
In a deeply aspiration goal, she tells me she took a 'sabbatical' from watching TV for 18 months in order to read more books. It was only after she started watching it again that she discovered British telly – and one show in particular.
‘These women had this funny little scene going about not being able to remember John Travolta’s name. Oh, I wish I had looked at the name of it.’ She pauses a moment, trying to remember it. ‘It’s called The Change. Have you watched that? My god, so fantastic.’
I have – and it is. The whip-smart Channel 4 comedy follows Linda, a woman who tries to find a new lease of life when she learns she's menopausal. The John Travolta scene is both an on-the-nose depiction of menopausal brain fog and pant-wetting-ly funny.
That comedies like this exist at all offers some proof that the ageing conversation is being heard by commissioning editors. Does Andie think 50+ women are becoming more visible? ‘I don’t think that we've made enough progress,’ she begins. ‘That people are struggling so much at the thought of Kamala Harris becoming president, along with the way she's being treated, proves how insecure our culture is with women.’
She’s not wrong; with the election now just weeks away, the misogynoir is showing no sign of abating, from the op-ed in the New York Post declaring her a ‘DEI hire’ (which stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the US) to those ‘childless cat lady’ comments from JD Vance. ‘[Some in society] feel that they can still define us by prehistoric ideas of what it is to be a woman and we're having to break that mold,’ Andie tells me. ‘I hope that I'm a participant in that progress that we are making’.
On the topic of progress, it’s no secret that one of the more disheartening aspects of the entertainment industry is the disposable attitude toward female talent as they get older. But MacDowell joins a growing number of celebrities who are completely unapologetic about ageing in the spotlight. And while the unattainable beauty standards promoted within our youth-obsessed culture are part of the problem, the topic is getting more airtime than ever.
Just this month, Andie’s daughter Margaret Qualley – who played her on-screen daughter in the award-winning 2020 Netflix drama Maid - starred in The Substance, a feminist body horror that serves as a cautionary tale against the toxic beauty ideals and rampant ageism that skin-altering filters and AI influencers, among other things, are delivering.
Andie cheers on the film. ‘I'm so excited to see the movie and I want to go to the theatre just like everybody else,’ she tells me. ‘I'm really proud of my daughter, she is extraordinary, and I'm happy for her and Demi [Moore, who stars alongside Qualley], and that they got to do this together. I can't wait to see it’.
You don’t have to spend long in Andie’s orbit to see that her belief that ageing and relevance aren’t mutually exclusive concepts runs bone-deep. She’s been a global ambassador for L’Oréal Paris – a brand for whom championing older women is a core value – since 1985, making her the brand’s longest-serving representative.
‘They were the first brand I saw using older women [in advertisements and as brand ambassadors], showing that older women are still relative and have a place at the table, and that we're still glamorous and beautiful as we age. I’m really proud to work for that company,’ she tells me.
It's a sentiment she swears by in her own approach to beauty. She stopped colouring her hair during the pandemic after her kids told her that her salt and pepper strands looked "badass”. 'I was surprised by the attention that I got, she reflects. ‘But I was grateful, because then other women can feel comfortable about having silver hair. They know that it's glamorous and fun and a choice.’
And now? 'I don't even think about it anymore. Like a man in so many ways because they don't sit around and think: ‘Oh, my hair is silver’,’ she adds, shooting me a look that says ‘so why the hell should I?’
Any other beauty tricks she swears by in her sixties? 'I fill in my eyebrows with L'Oreal Paris Infallible 24H Brow Filling Triangular Pencil because as you age, they thin out a little bit. I do that no matter where I'm going, even if I'm going to walk on the beach, because otherwise I look very strange.’
Those walks on the beach are a regular feature of her workout week. 'I'm very fortunate that I enjoy exercising - for me, it's fun,’ she tells me, on her commitment to movement for both her body and her mind. ‘I love to walk and I try my best to walk five miles a day, although I don't always accomplish that if I'm filming.'
Even when she is working long hours, she’ll fit in a workout. 'I'll do thirty minutes of yoga during my lunch if I'm on set because I know that otherwise I just don't feel good.’ Her north star? Strength. 'I don't want to be weak, I want to be strong - and it's not about being thin or skinny,’ she begins, before giving it to me straight. ‘At my age, you realise how hard and ridiculous that is, what a waste of time that is - and also, that it's not important.'
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