Getty Images; Instagram/Rachel Ward
A retired actress slams comments calling her “unrecognizable” at 68.
When British model and actress Rachel Ward posted a video of herself without makeup on Instagram, she began receiving messages about her “unrecognizable” appearance.
“Omg!! What the hell happened to her?” one comment read. “Wow!! She has aged really, really bad.”
On Saturday, Ward, who has posed on the covers of major magazines, including Vogue and Cosmopolitan, responded to these comments in an interview with ABC News.
“I’m so past caring about what people think about one’s appearance or age,” Ward told the outlet. “Why do we feel we’ve got to pretend that we’re still 40 when we’re 68?”
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She now spends her days without makeup at the 350-hectare farm in Nambucca Valley, Australia, that she owns with her husband of over four decades, Australian actor Bryan Brown, 78.
The two, who share three children, met on the set of the highly successful American 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds.
Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward at the premiere of “Blackbird” at the Sydney Theatre Company in December 2007.
Ward recalled growing up with a father who taught her to put value on her looks.
“What do you need an education for? You are pretty enough to marry someone very rich,” her father told Ward.
She first started to provide for herself as a model, but in 1982, Ward moved to Hollywood to switch her modeling career to one of an actress.
There, she was disappointed to discover how much women were sexualized.
“You were really not of any value unless it was your sexuality,” she recalled the days of her earlier career.
Rachel Ward in “The Thorn Birds” in 1983.
ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Now, she does not put value on looks, and shrugs off the mean comments.
“A few trolls were a bit shocked about my gray hair, who maybe hadn’t seen me since I was 24, and then went, ‘Oh my God, that’s what you end up looking like,’” she said.
Ward said she is shaking the old limitations for women, who “weren’t allowed to have a wrinkle, weren’t allowed to go grey, weren’t allowed to not care”.
“That whole harping … that we still have to be sexual beings is terrifying. To have to have our bums lifted and our breasts lifted and our faces drawn back. It just becomes grotesque,” she said.
“All I can say is that it’s great to put that behind you, how you should look and be.”
In January, Ward also posted on Instagram in response to negativity.
“In [my] sixties… I am more fulfilled than ever, and I have no regrets leaving my youth and beauty behind,” she said, adding, “Do not fear aging, it’s a wonderful period of life.”
In the interview, she said that the two Instagram videos had brought her many new followers.
“How ironic that my going gray actually garnered me more attention than if I’d taken my top off,” Ward laughed.
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