Andie MacDowell’s role as Paula in the television series Maid is serendipitous. Not only is she the mother of the young heroine portrayed by real-life daughter Margaret Qualley, but both actresses received Golden Globe nominations. Portraying the role of the vulnerable mother, who struggles to overcome an abusive marriage while providing for her three-year-old child, may have brought back memories of MacDowell’s rough beginnings.
In a recent video interview with Sam Jones (www.offcamera.com), MacDowell talked about her turbulent childhood in a small town of South Carolina. Noting that she grew up with a mother who was diagnosed as schizophrenic, she said, “I’m surprised I survived. I used to put out cigarettes every night because [my mother] would smoke.” She added: “Having our children was cathartic because it allowed us to do everything that we wished our parents had done for us.” Now at age 63, MacDowell can be proud of her accomplishments as a parent to three children, daughters Margaret and Rainey, and a son, Justin.
She has received multiple Golden Globe nominations, including for iconic films such as Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), Green Card (1990), Groundhog Day (1993), and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). MacDowell has not stopped working in film and television, leaning a little more on comedy with significant roles in productions such as the ABC series Jane by Design (2012), the dramatic Hallmark Channel family series Cedar Grove (2013-2015), the BBC series Cuckoo (2019) and in the hit horror-comedy Ready or Not (2019). In Maid, she does not shy away from grappling with mental illness in her portrayal of an artist who, beneath a façade of flamboyance and delusions of grandeur, is desperate for a sense of belonging and safety.
Despite her natural beauty and years of working as a print and television model, MacDowell does not foster any standards of perfection. “You know what? I’m tired of the clichés, and so are all of us,” she said unapologetically in the same interview. “I want to be the person in the bed, and I want the man to be at the doorway dropping the towel.”
Now it all comes together in this serendipitous moment. An experienced professional is enjoying stardom as well as abundant work opportunities in varied genres created under very different directing styles. Andie MacDowell knows by now that the one thing that remains is a sense of fulfillment, a sense that comes with the realization that life is a never-ending process in growing awareness of one’s humanness.