Andie Macdowell on her late alcoholic mom: poor thing, its a awful disease
Andie Macdowell has always been goals to me. She turns 60 at the end of this month. I would put her around 50 but only because I’ve followed her career. She always looks so natural and gorgeous and every interview I see with her is a treat. Andie told People magazine that she had a tough childhood with an alcoholic single mother but that she doesn’t have any resentment or blame. Andie’s mom died of a heart attack when Andie was just 23. At that time Andie was already modeling in New York. Her mom would never get to see her daughter on the big screen, where she made her breakout role in Greystoke in 1984. (Do you remember that movie? They dubbed Andie’s voice!) Here’s some of what she told People:
As a young girl in Gaffney, S.C., MacDowell lived with her mother, Pauline Johnston, a music teacher, who divorced MacDowell’s father when the actress was 7. Johnston struggled with alcoholism and often wasn’t there for her daughter but MacDowell tells PEOPLE in the new issue, “she always loved me.” The actress says she doesn’t harbor any resentment.
“I don’t have a lot of anger,” she says of her mother, who died of a heart attack when MacDowell was 23. “I have a lot of compassion. Poor thing. It’s an awful disease…”
MacDowell, who turns 60 on April 21, can be seen in the film Love After Love and the Hallmark Channel movie The Beach House, airing April 28. Off-camera, she loves hiking, yoga and spending time with her three kids Justin, 31, Rainey, 28, and Margaret, 23, with model ex-husband Paul Qualley.
And although she admits her childhood at times was “crazy” she adds it was also filled with love.
“I felt loved so that was the saving grace,” she says. “There were good things. There were a lot of good memories too.”
Andie MacDowell should still be doing big budget movies or starring in TV series, but she’s on the Hallmark Channel. There’s no shame in that and I just saw her in a Christmas romance movie on Netflix, Christmas Inheritance, where Andie played the helpful aunt with a bakery, mentoring the lead who had two dudes after her. Andie should be playing the lead! Netflix had that romance with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford, but there’s a whole world in between end of life and very young, where 40-70 year-olds fall in love too. We want to see that in the movies and on demand. How about Andie and a guy who is younger, but not by much, like Keanu Reeves? I would be all over a romance movie with Andie and Keanu.
As for her thoughts on her mom, it’s sad. Alcohol robs so many people of their lives, their relationships and their potential. I say this as someone who cannot moderate and had to give it up a couple of years ago. It was the best and only thing I could have done.
After I wrote this story, I found this incredible interview that Andie did with The Daily Beast. She talks about Harvey Weinstein, how she had no idea he was a “monster” but that he didn’t make any movies with her after she did Sex Lies and Videotape. She met with him on a yacht at Cannes and realized later that he had been surrounded by hookers and that she was clueless about it. She said that she was married with two kids at home when she met him and that she tried to talk to him about his wife and kids but that it was awkward.
Photos are from March of this year. Credit: Backgrid and Pacific Coast News
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