Hannah Waddingham Says There's No Way Her 50th Birthday Will Top Turning 40 (Exclusive)

So how will Hannah Waddingham celebrate her 50th birthday on July 28?

The star is considering a big dance party with an ’80s band (where she might just lounge on a piano at London’s Hotel Café Royal like she did for this shoot). But she already knows there’s no way to top turning 40.

“I brought my daughter out of hospital [that day],” the Ted Lasso star says of her only child (she hasn’t publicly disclosed her name), whom she lives with in London. Then again, her daughter is turning 10 this year, “so I do feel like I need to do a double whammy with her. She’s already said, ‘Can we have grown-up and younger versions of the same dress?’ My little love.” 

When it comes to beauty, Waddingham, who can now be seen in the movie The Fall Guy, is teaching her daughter the importance of embracing who she is.

“I’ve always said to be completely free and loose, and the people that love you will do so regardless,” says the actress. “You shouldn’t have to try too hard.”

That goes for Waddingham herself when it comes to entering her sixth decade of life.

“This whole thing about hiding your age is not for me, personally. I like to go, ‘I’m just about to turn 50,’ and hopefully they go, ‘No!’ ”

So was there something that you wish you'd known in your 20s that you know now?
Yeah, that my height and my strength of character... I wish I could whisper in my ear when I was 20, "Just keep quietly plugging at it," because eventually, it won't matter. Because it was a problem back in the day. It was always, "Oh, we've cast this person, that person," all the time.

It was always a bloke first. And I wish I could have said to myself, "Just wait. Just wait. Just bide your time." But would that have made me behave differently in my career? I don't know. But I think that was the thing through my 20s and a bit into my 30s as well, feeling self-conscious of my size, whereas now, f--- it.

Is there something you have the confidence to do now at 50 that you might not have at 25?
I would say the first seven years for some reason, specifically like 20 to 27, when you are trying to carve a space for yourself, I feel like I probably was more soft-edged than I perhaps would be now.

And I think part of the reason I've become more strident with my opinions is my success in America. I do feel like there is an American sensibility of speaking your mind and that's okay, knowing your own ability.

So, yeah, I've really loved having more American people in my life that just encouraged me to be who I am and call things out.

How have your priorities changed as you've gotten older?
Undeniably my daughter. Undeniably. She has changed me for the better. I'm so rooted by her in my life. I always describe her as my zero, like a bungee rope. I go off and do things, but she's my zero. She's my anchor.

And she's at an age now where she vacillates between... Hilariously, sometimes she'll come out with a six-year-old's comment, and other times she is so wise it absolutely makes me sit up.

How do you approach wellness now?
I think it has got harder to look after myself both mentally and physically. Time, I need to get better at time management for sure, because it's very easy to be running around like a lunatic all the time and doing everything that people are offering to me and striking while the iron's hot, as it were. But by the same token, you do have to be careful of burnout.

What shifts have you seen in perceptions of aging or beauty through the years?
Thankfully, I would say in the last, maybe not 10 years, but five, eight years certainly, finally, and thank God it's when I'm turning 50, it seems like women in the middle of their lives are being treated like the well-informed, culturally heavy, passionate human beings that they are.

In terms of my career roles, being encouraged to split off as a presenter, split off as this, split off as that, there used to be a lot of [stereotypes] about older women, and I feel like we've smashed the living s--- out of that.

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