Monica Bellucci isn’t afraid of getting older. She has a very simple reason.
The 62-year-old Italian actress explained in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar España, published on September 18: “There is no real alternative: either you grow old and accept the process with dignity, or you die. Seen that way, I much prefer growing older”. For her, getting older means being lucky enough to still be alive and have a future.
And there’s something else maturity brings, she said: a sense of detachment. Sometimes, she said, you stop being just an actress and become a spectator of the world, which makes you see everything from a different perspective.
She also talked about her new film, The Birthday Party (Histoires de la nuit), a psychological thriller in which she plays an Italian painter who lives alone on a remote island.
She says she could never have played that role at 30 or 40, not even with layers of makeup to make her look older: “To give weight and truth to a character with so much inner turmoil, you have to have lived. You have to accumulate scars and experience”.
Her definition of beauty today has nothing to do with the mirror: it’s about having a rich inner life, a passion that inspires you, watching your children grow, looking at the sea, and having friends and a family you love. And she ends with an image anyone can understand: as the years go by, waking up in good health or enjoying the aroma of coffee becomes a reason to give thanks.
