Something Just Like This

Anne Curtis, after all this time, is still the country’s sweetheart. And we have a feeling that’s never going to change.

- Marla Miniano

It is 2003, and an 18-year-old Anne Curtis has just landed her very first Cosmo cover. In it she wears her hair long and stick-straight, her eyebrows arched and thin, her lips a matte nude. A powder blue halter dress clings to the young actress’s body, showing off ample cleavage and a tiny waist. The cover blurb proudly proclaims, “Anne Curtis grows up.” 

And grow up was exactly what she did from that point on, with as much determination and enthusiasm as a teenager could muster, having moved out of her parents’ house and into a condo she wasn’t even sure she could afford to rent on her own. “That’s when everything got real for me,” she reminisces. “I struggled with small things like doing the groceries, comparing prices of toilet paper, paying my utility bills, not forgetting deadlines. I really did all of that by myself. But it’s okay because I wanted to do it. I wanted to prove that I could. I wanted to do my own thing without having to wait for anyone’s approval.”

Now, 14 years and 9 Cosmo covers later, Anne is wiser and more sure of herself, validated by the constant outpouring of love from her fans and grounded by the two eventful decades she’s spent working in the industry. “I’m still young at heart,” she assures us, as if we needed any convincing—the ever-present playful gleam in her eyes, no matter how exhausted she is from her graveyard shoot shifts for the upcoming action movie Buy Bust, is more than enough proof. “I don’t let my age define me or take over my spirit, which has always been childlike and free.”

What’s your definition of independence?