Angelina Jolie has it right: growing old is a victory

The actress’s attitude to ageing makes a refreshing change says Suzannah Ramsdale

There’s much to praise Angelina Jolie for. She’s a humanitarian, a human rights campaigner and has worked hard for the last nine years in her role as special envoy for the UN Refugee Agency to highlight the plight of women who have been raped in war zones. Along with the movies and fashion campaigns, there is, it seems, a real passion to help, to get involved, to leave the world in a slightly better state.

This week’s cover interview for British Vogue with editor-in-chief Edward Enninful was unusually candid for the actress-director. She spoke frankly about healing from her split with actor and father to her six children Brad Pitt and how difficult she found the aftermath. “The past few years have been pretty hard. I’ve been focusing on healing our family. It’s slowly coming back, like the ice melting and the blood returning to my body,” she said.

She also talked refreshingly about ageing and how she feels sure it’ll all fall into place in the next decade. The 45-year-old said: “I’m looking forward to my fifties — I feel that I’m gonna hit my stride in my fifties.”

Getting older — as we all know but society often dictates otherwise — is a privilege. No one knows this more than Angelina. Her mother died after a long battle with breast cancer aged 56 (Angelina had a double mastectomy in 2013 after discovering she had the same BRCA1 gene and an 87 per cent chance of developing cancer). Angelina is painfully aware that each day is sacred — even the really grey ones.

“I do like being older. I feel much more comfortable in my forties than I did when I was younger. Maybe because … I don’t know … maybe because my mom didn’t live very long, so there’s something about age that feels like a victory instead of a sadness for me.”

Vogue/Craig McDean

Women who continue to thrive — wear what they want, shag who they want, say what they want — after a certain age (usually 50) are often described as ageing disgracefully. The same adage is not used to describe a man who dresses how he likes, sleeps with who he likes and spouts opinions. Time to be more Ange, I say, and see each new day, each new wrinkle, each new grey hair as a small but important victory.

Source: standard.co.uk