Andie MacDowell, 68, on Going Grey, ’90s Brow Regret, and the Drugstore L’Oréal Products on Her Vanity

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“I wanted to see myself ageing,” the actress and longtime L’Oréal Paris ambassador told Glamour UK in a recent interview at Cannes.

One thing you may or may not have noticed about Andie MacDowell on the Cannes red carpet this year: her hair is fully grey, and she has stopped caring whether you have an opinion about it. The 68-year-old actress and longtime L’Oréal Paris ambassador, who left LA a couple of years ago for a five-bedroom house on Kiawah Island just south of Charleston, sat down with Glamour UK at the festival to talk about everything from going grey (her dad inspired it) to ’90s skinny brows (please don’t do it) to the three drugstore products on her vanity right now (all L’Oréal Paris, all under $25).

During lockdown, her color grew out and she didn’t book the appointment to fix it. The deeper reason she kept it that way, she told the magazine, came from watching her father after her mother died at 53.

“I watched my father and he was my inspiration. I always thought he was so beautiful, so handsome. And I loved watching how his hair turned grey and how it got whiter and whiter. And I just wanted to have that opportunity for myself. Even though I’m a woman, I wanted to give myself permission to do the same thing that my father did.”

Four years on, MacDowell is still the face of L’Oréal Paris, still landing roles, and still showing up on every red carpet with her hair fully silver, which is not the way the going-grey-on-camera story usually goes for Hollywood women.

On the ’90s skinny brow trend creeping back

MacDowell didn’t hold back when Glamour asked her about the pencil-thin brow trend creeping back onto runways and red carpets this season, and what she said is what most of us wish someone had told us at 25, when we had tweezers and free time.

“I fought that in the ’90s and then finally I let someone do it and it was just devastating because your eyebrows don’t grow back. I didn’t realize they were doing that again. I think it’s a super bad direction because, as you age, you lose your eyebrows. All those women that I know that plucked their eyebrows are so mad at themselves, they’re having tattooed eyebrows because they don’t have any eyebrows.”

Expert back this claim up: repeated plucking damages the follicle, and over years the hair often doesn’t come back. Add in age-related thinning (which hits the tail of the brow first), and you get the microblading boom of the last decade, with most of those appointments going to women in their 60s and 70s who plucked in their 20s and 30s and have been dealing with sparse brows ever since.

What’s actually on her vanity

MacDowell might be their brand ambassador, but she says she is loyal to L’Oréal Paris after all these years. The best news? Each of these products is under $25.

L’Oréal Paris True Match Lumi Le Glass Highlighter Stick ($14)

This is the highlighter MacDowell reaches for when she wants a going-to-dinner glow. She says she wears the darker shade because her skin is olive and she lives at the beach (a combination we are very jealous of). For the rest of us, the lighter versions tap into the inner corner of the eye with a tiny dab, no mascara needed, and brighten the whole face.

The texture is a creamy balm that gives a healthy skin glow vs. a disco-ball vibe that some highlighters seem to reflect in sunlight, which is perfect for any age but definitely over 40. The dewy finish won’t last forever and you won’t want to layer it over heavy foundation. So think of this as a something to use alongside your tinted-moisturizer or even alone when you want a little zing.

L’Oréal Paris Plump Ambition Hyaluron Lip Oil in ‘Worth It’ ($13)

MacDowell pointed at the fine vertical lines above her upper lip when describing why she likes this one. Hyaluronic-acid lip oils took off as a category in 2022 after Dior’s Lip Glow Oil dominated TikTok, and the L’Oréal version is one of the better drugstore answers to it. The HA base sinks into those vertical lines instead of settling on top of them.

‘Worth It’ is a darker nude, which will look close to a natural lip but slightly enhanced, and the kind of color you wear when you want to look like yourself, just a more put-together version. It’s a lip oil rather than a long-wear lipstick, so plan on touching up every two to three hours. While the hyaluronic acid will smooth lines short-term, it won’t fix underlying volume loss (which is a separate conversation for your dermatologist if it bothers you).

L’Oréal Paris Age Perfect Golden Age Night Cream ($25)

MacDowell says she switched from Revitalift to Age Perfect when she hit her late 40s. L’Oréal launched the original Age Perfect in 2003, which was one of the first mass-market lines aimed at women over 50. Golden Age is the post-menopausal range they added later, with neocalcium (a calcium-mimicking peptide) as the headline ingredient.