Andie MacDowell Says She 'Was Afraid' to Come to Cannes After Having a Baby: 'It's a Real Shame' (Exclusive)

Andie MacDowell celebrates the way moms in Hollywood and beyond are owning their bodies in 2024.

The actress and L’Oréal Paris ambassador, 66 — who has a long-standing partnership with the brand and has attended the Cannes Film Festival for many years — made the surprising admission to PEOPLE during an interview at the festival on Saturday, May 25.

Reflecting on the ways fashion and beauty at the event have evolved over the years, the mother of three reveals, “I didn’t come [to Cannes] for [promotion of the 1989 film] Sex, lies and video tapes. I just had a baby. I was afraid.”

It is not clear which of her children she was referring to, but her son, Justin, was born in 1986 and daughter Rainey was born in 1990. She is also mother to Margaret and shares all of her children with ex-husband Paul Qualley.

The way home star — who attended Loréal’s Lights on Women Awards on May 24 — is likely implying that she didn’t want to come to an event as big as the Cannes Film Festival and make herself vulnerable to criticism of her postpartum body.

Andie MacDowell on the “La Plus Precieuse des Marchandises” red carpet.

Dominique Charriau/WireImage

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MacDowell says that at the time in Hollywood and elsewhere it was culturally acceptable to be “cruel to women,” but notes that times have changed.

“Because of the shift in our expectations and because we put it out there, they can’t be like that to us anymore,” she tells PEOPLE, adding that she recently gave birth and Cannes is on her schedule “now I wouldn’t be afraid to come.”

At the time she skipped the event, she explains, “I was, nursing, I was really big and just motherly and whatever, and I didn’t come. And that’s a shame. That’s a real shame.”

Andie MacDowell and her family.

Ron Galella, Ltd./Collection of Ron Galella via Getty

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“Now I embrace my female body. I think it’s very sexy. But I don’t think we could feel sexy inside because we were told we weren’t,” she continues.

But women no longer accept such behavior, MacDowell says.

“We asked for it, we pulled it back and said, ‘But this is what it means to be a woman. We’re not girls, we’re women,'” Groundhog Day adds the star.

One of the ways MacDowell embraces her age as a Hollywood veteran is by keeping her hair a shade of gray she called silver in a recent interview with NewBeauty.

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Andie MacDowell with her family.

Andie MacDowell’s Instagram

MacDowell admitted she was also “afraid” to commit to that change until 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I finally got the courage during COVID when I saw it with my own eyes and the color of my skin. When it grew out, I could see what color it was going to be and I really liked it. I knew it was time,” she said during a conversation in which invited people to consider whether they would be bothered by her choice of hair color if she were a man.

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Source: HIS Education