Andie MacDowell

Andie MacDowell came out of Gaffney, South Carolina, signed with Elite Model Management in 1978 and spent the early 1980s as a Calvin Klein face, which is not usually a promising route into acting. Her film debut proved the point. Cast as Jane in Greystoke in 1984, she had her entire performance dubbed by Glenn Close because the producers objected to her accent. Very few careers survive that particular humiliation, still fewer when it is conducted in public and reported everywhere.

Steven Soderbergh repaired it. sex, lies, and videotape won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1989 and had cost $1.2 million to make; MacDowell played Ann, whose stillness carries the film's first hour almost unassisted. She won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, shared the Los Angeles Film Critics Association prize for Best Actress with Michelle Pfeiffer, and took a Golden Globe nomination in the drama category. The accent was no longer a topic of conversation.

What followed was a run of comedies that used her precisely. Green Card in 1990, then Groundhog Day in 1993, where the joke depends entirely on her not being in on it. Robert Altman put her in the Short Cuts ensemble the same year, which took the Special Volpi Cup at Venice and a special Golden Globe for the cast. Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994 made $245.7 million worldwide; she had accepted a heavily reduced fee and earned many times it from the profits.

She has been a L'Oreal spokeswoman since 1986, which makes her decision in 2021 slightly pointed. She grew her grey out during lockdown and walked the Cannes red carpet with it, having said she did not want anyone expecting her to look younger in order to have value. The same year she played the mother in the Netflix series Maid, and was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2022. The then-and-now comparison mostly documents somebody declining to take part in it.