NEWSLaura Linney Loves Her Wrinkles
Jul. 7 2011, Published 12:00 p.m. ET
Although many actresses go to great lengths to appear ageless, Laura Linney doesn’t concern herself with maintaining line-free skin.
The Big C star, 47, confesses she’s never felt pressured to go under the knife.
“I’m an actress, and for me, it’s not the right choice,” she tells me at Cosmopolitan’s Practice Safe Sun Awards held in NYC. “I have no problem with anybody doing whatever they want to do – really live and let live, and certainly never say never -- but it doesn’t make sense for me at this point.”
If anything, she embraces every age mark as it appears.
“I’m lucky because I have good genes, and I take care of my skin and I’m aware of it, but I’m actually grateful to be aging,” she says. “A lot of people don’t get that privilege, so for me, whatever wrinkle I might have or whatever sagging might be there – most people don’t get to have that because there are so many people who die of melanoma every year, so I’m thrilled to have any wrinkle I can, and I don’t think it’s unattractive.”
What are her safe sun tips?
“Well, sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen laughs is always good, and I’m so pale that I burn very easily,” she says. “I’m lucky because I don’t like being in the sun a whole lot, just because the repercussions for me – I feel it, I go very red. I wear a lot of scarves because I get very burned through the décolletage area, and I love hats and I look good in hats, so I do wear hats. I do the big, crazy, Southern lady gardening hat, and I do the baseball cap. Normally it has a movie title on it. Crew hats. And I love fedoras.”
Still, she encourages everything in moderation.
“It doesn’t mean you can’t be in the sun,” she says. “It just means you have to grow up and be a little responsible about it, and there’s so many people who complain about the consistency of sunscreen, what it does to makeup, it’s inconvenient. There are now so many different kinds of sunscreen – there are lotions, there are sprays, there are powders. There’s something for everybody out there. People just have to grow up, face the reality of the situation, and be responsible.”
Psst: She prefers powder sunscreen.
Although her Big C castmates use Roxanne Rizzo's Bronze Glow when needed, she shies away from spray tanning.
“Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange,” she says. “I mean, they look like gingerbread people. I mean, they do. In an effort to look better, it doesn’t look better. It really doesn’t. I think what everyone is going for is looking healthy, not necessarily looking tan, but there’s an association of tan being healthy, and I think there’s a responsible way to do that.”
The Big C airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime.
