Andie MacDowell Talks Filming First Nude Scene At Age 59, Notes That Her Daughter Has Also Done One

Andie MacDowell waited until her daughters were old enough to film nude scenes before doing one of her own in Love After Love. During a recent interview with Page Six, the actress talked about getting naked on film for the first time at age 59. She also explained why one of her daughters, 23-year-old Margaret Qualley, was comfortable doing the same at a much younger age.

It’s been almost three decades since Andie MacDowell appeared in a movie titled Sex, Lies, and Videotape. However, the star of early ’90s classics like Groundhog Day and Four Weddings and a Funeral is just now getting the opportunity to describe what it was like filming a nude scene. She’s been reliving this new experience quite often while promoting her family drama, Love After Love. In the film, she shows off her emotional range by playing a grieving widow who decides to start dating again. This leads to the sexual encounter that MacDowell can’t seem to avoid talking about during every interview about the movie.

“With this film Love After Love, everyone’s suddenly paying attention. The most attention I’ve gotten in a long while,” she said of the buzz surrounding the movie.

Andie MacDowell’s nude scene is likely getting so much attention because it’s so unusual for an actress to wait until she’s almost 60 years old to do one for the first time. However, the soon-to-be sexagenarian wants moviegoers to know that she had a good reason to take her clothes off in Love After Love. According to the actress, the scene helps to paint a clearer picture of who her character is and what she’s going through.

“I have sex in this. I’m naked. It’s not gratuitous. It’s emotional. I play a lonely lady. First time my character’s doing it, she’s not ready.”

MacDowell said that she was surprisingly comfortable stripping down on camera, especially after director Russell Harbaugh reassured her that she looked “beautiful” during a practice run. She revealed that she “felt no shame,” and she “didn’t care who was there [on set]” when she filmed the scene. So if she was so comfortable doing it, why did she wait so long to get naked in a movie?

Andie MacDowell has offered a few different explanations for why she’s always used body doubles in sex scenes. She recently told the New York Post that she was simply heeding the advice of her agents and managers. She also said that she didn’t want to embarrass her children, but she no longer worries about this now that they’re adults. However, during a 2014 interview with the Daily Mail, she said that avoided showing skin early on in her career because “you never saw respected actresses showing their boobs.” At the time, her two actress daughters, Margaret Qualley and Rainey Qualley, were asking her for advice on whether they should accept roles that required nudity.

“I’d never tell them what to do, but I do say that if nude scenes were what it took to become an actress when I started, I probably wouldn’t have done it,” she said.

However, her feelings about nude scenes have changed. She told Variety that she actually began encouraging her daughters to get naked on film after her experience filming Love After Love.

“I keep telling my girls, ‘You’re so beautiful, you should just do it,'” she said. “‘Go. Do it. Don’t wait.'”

Margaret Qualley, a former ballet dancer who gained acclaim by showing off some wild moves in Spike Jonze’s Kenzo perfume ad, took her mother’s advice. The 23-year-old filmed a nude scene in the 2017 movie Novitiate, and now MacDowell is taking some credit for giving her daughter the confidence to do so.

“My actress daughter’s been naked in a movie,” MacDowell said. “I have never made my family ashamed of their bodies.”

During an interview with the Daily Beast, the MacDowell blamed her conservative upbringing for the “shame” she used to feel about nudity. She said that she has done her best to make sure that her daughters never feel the same way.

While she’s had nothing but positive things to say about filming her nude scene in Love After Love, Andie MacDowell didn’t sign on for the film simply because she wanted to do one for the first time. She told the Hollywood Reporter that she found the project alluring because it was unusual for a woman of her age to be offered a role that’s so “complex” and “interesting.” She also revealed that the scenes where her lonely and vulnerable character bares her broken soul, not her body, are the ones that affected her most during filming.