Andie MacDowell: Roles of My Life

THE BELOVED STAR AND BEAUTY ICON REFLECTS ON THE DEFINING MOMENTS IN HER CAREER—AND HOW SHE PROVED SHE COULD HOLD HER OWN IN HOLLYWOOD

- JULIE JORDAN

Andie MacDowell is trying to adjust her camera for a Zoom call. “Doggone it,” she says in her southern accent with a sigh as she studies the screen through her glasses. The actress and former model, 66, is home in South Carolina for the holidays, having wrapped season 3 of Hallmark’s hit drama The Way Home. “I get so excited when I’m walking onto set,” she says of the series. “It’s nice at my age and after all this time to have that feeling of joy. I’m very conscious of it, so I try to share it and tell everybody how lucky we are.”

Despite four decades as an actress, MacDowell is the first to insist she got lucky. “It’s a miracle I made it,” she says. “I’m not going to take anything from me, but I had to overcome some really huge hurdles.”

Raised in South Carolina, MacDowell was already a successful model (she’s L’Oréal’s longest-reigning spokesperson) when she won a breakthrough role as Jane in 1984’s Greystoke, The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, but the critics were harsh. “I could have easily given up,” she says.

“This business is really cruel. The things that they wrote about me were just terrible.” Yet the naysayers only bolstered MacDowell’s determination to “prove to the casting directors that I was not trash, that I was valuable,” she says. Her career trajectory changed when she won the role of a sexually passive housewife in 1989’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, costarring James Spader, and the film spawned more unforgettable leading roles in ’90s classics like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Groundhog Day.