It's a privilege getting older

Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts opens up to LARA OWEN about loss and why she's done with the pursuit of youth

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Race for Life

NICOLA Roberts has just turned 40, and during her birthday celebrations, her friends asked how she felt. She didn't hesitate: "I have friends that didn't manage to make it to 40.

"So it is a privilege to get older. We should show gratitude for ageing, because it means we're around a little bit longer, and that is imperatively important."

It's a refreshing response from someone who's spent half her life in an industry built on staying forever young. But Nicola, the youngest member of Girls Aloud, isn't clinging to the past.

"There's freedom at any age if you truly accept and love who you are," she says.

That sense of acceptance runs through everything she says as well as her newfound approach to wellbeing. Nicola is speaking as she marks a new chapter, having recently been announced as the face of Aveeno's new Age Renewal range.

The collaboration feels apt: the line promotes what it calls "ageing gratefully," an adage that Nicola lives by, following the death of friend and fellow band mate Sarah Harding in 2021.

Sarah died of breast cancer aged 39, just two months shy of her 40th birthday.

Losing Sarah, Nicola says, put many things into perspective. It made her reconsider the relentless pursuit of improvement that had long defined both her industry and her own habits.

"I've got gentler with myself," says Nicola who was born in Lincolnshire and grew up in Runcorn, Cheshire. "I don't want to put my skin through it anymore.