Timeless beauty. Four celebs reveal their healthy attitudes to looking fabulous at any age.
In your twenties:
Jennifer Lawrence
The 23-year-old actress has always been stubborn, but her famed straight-shooting personality still hasn’t stopped others trying to tell her to drop a few kilograms. The gorgeous 61kg star has admitted to feeling pressured by those in the industry to lose weight as a teenager, and was outrageously told that she was “fat” earlier in her career, before shooting to stardom through her roles in The Hunger Games movies, and her Oscar-winning performance in Silver Linings Playbook.
- “It was just that kind of s** that actresses have to go through,” she told Harper’s Baazar magazine. “Somebody told me I was fat, that I was going to get fired if I didn’t lose a certain amount of weight. They brought in pictures of me when I was basically naked, and said to use them as motivation for my diet.” Although the words hurt at the time, Jennifer now has the confidence to deal with negative comments.
“If anyone even tries to whisper the word diet, I’m like, you can go *** yourself,” she says. Jennifer faced criticism when she was cast as heroine Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games* – the second instalment of which is due out in December, as she was deemed too “big boned” play the half-starved tribute. The actress laughed off the jibes at the time, telling a friend that it was “hilarious”.
In your thirties:
Kate Winslet
The British actress has long been the face of the “normal” woman, and she’s showing no signs of changing.
While many pregnant women are terrified of weight gain, Kate, who is due this month, has said that having a perfect body just isn’t that important to her.
“Look, I’m 37 years old. We have one life. I don’t want to spend my time thinking about the size of my arse,” she told UK magazine Time Out.
“I want to be as healthy as I can be, and I want to have as much fun as I can have. I want to be around for my children. That’s it. Those are the priorities. Not getting a flat stomach.”
Kate, who is a spokesperson for Body Heart, an organisation that encourages women to embrace the skin they’re in, makes sure she tells daughter Mia to love her body.
“As a child, I never heard one woman say to me, ‘I love my body.’ Not my mother, my elder sister, my best friend. So, I make sure to say it to Mia, because a positive physical outlook has to start at an early age.”
In your fifties:
Michelle Pfeiffer
She hasn’t closed the book completely on a “little bit of help”, but 55-year-old Michelle agrees that the pressure she used to feel to stay youthful is behind her.
Speaking to Ladies Home Journal last month, the Scarface star said, “Having to watch yourself age on a giant movie screen is simply not natural. It can wreak havoc on your psyche. My dermatologist said to me once, ‘You know that 10 x magnifying mirror that you have in the bathroom? Throw it away.’ It was the best advice anyone ever gave me. Of course, now my eyes are weaker and I can’t see to put my make-up on without that mirror!”
Although she’s open to surgery, Michelle finds it sad when “people don’t look like themselves anymore”. But says, “Once you get over a certain hump, there actually is less pressure. I’ve moved over to that other side – I’m 55, which is a little too close to 60, but looking great for my age is okay now,” she said.
In your sixties:
Helen Mirren
The Academy Award-winner has never been shy of controversy, or even acting her age, and the actress has now gone against the grain, as well as nutritionists and dietitians,to say she likes yo-yo dieting.
“I’m a great believer,” the 68-year-old says. “I do have two wardrobes – the plus 10 pounds (4.5kg) and minus 10 pounds…I know they say yo-yo dieting is very bad, but I actually think it’s very good. All my life, I’ve been within
10 pounds. When I get over it, I go, that’s it. You’ve got to pull back now.”
However, The Queen star was voted 2011 Body of the Year,proving emphatically that you can still be sexy in your sixties. “The hardest period in life is one’s twenties,” she told Esquire magazine. “It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous and physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure.”
Judy Kean
