Andie MacDowell wants women to own their age

For three decades, Andie MacDowell has been a beauty icon. Now a little more grey than brunette, she's more aware of her age than ever – thanks, in large part, to Hollywood.

In a new profile by The Zoe Report, the 63-year-old – who has been a L’Oréal brand ambassador for 35 years – says that she didn’t start colouring her hair until she was 40, when a journalist noted her greying hair during an interview. Discomfort swooped in and she began colouring her hair every three weeks.

But now, due to the pandemic, she's let the salt and pepper settle. MacDowell says, “I’d been wanting to do it for a few years. And then when COVID happened and I saw the roots coming in, I thought it suited me.”

With her manager's reticence, she didn't debut the new look until just this summer, on the Cannes red carpet. “I was scared that people would be mean,” she says. “I read all the comments.”

Except that she was met with overwhelming love and approval from peers, fans, and the internet for owning her age in an industry that rarely lets women look like anything other than a 22-year-old.

“I think women are tired of the idea that you can’t get old and be beautiful,” she says. “Men get old and we keep loving them. And I want to be like a man. I want to be beautiful and I don’t want to screw with myself to be beautiful.”

While for some, the transition to grey can be an awkward and self-conscious one, for MacDowell, it's been anything but – and rightfully so.

“I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I love my hair so much that I look in the mirror and I go, ‘Oh my god,'" she says. “It’s so pretty." Um, yeah.

But, she adds, more pointedly, “Men can go salt and pepper; we just think they’re gorgeous. We’ve been sold this idea that they’re better than we are. It’s bullshit!”

Indeed. But unlike some of her peers, MacDowell is continuing to find work in Hollywood that doesn't age her down, most recently in Netflix's upcoming series Maid, based on Stephanie Land’s bestselling memoir of being a young single mom working as a house cleaner to get by.

In it, MacDowell plays Paula, the narcissistic mother to young mom Alex, played by MacDowell’s real-life daughter Margaret Qualley.

“I was in Canada quarantining, and it just dawned on me that it should be my mom,” Qualley says. “I pitched the idea to [producer Margot Robbie], and she was so excited, and that was that! My mom’s career is so incredible and expansive and now she has the luxury of only doing things that mean the most to her. I feel lucky that Maid fit the bill. It’s always been a dream of mine to work with her and everything just felt right.”

All 10 episodes of Maid hit Netflix on October 1. 

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