• Emma Thompson recently shared her passionate feelings about aging and plastic surgery.
  • In a new interview, she called the trend a “collective form of psychosis,” adding that it’s a “very strange thing to do.”
  • The actress also opened up about baring her “untreated” body while filming a nude scene for her new film, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.

At 62, Emma Thompson has lived through life’s up and downs, and, in her opinion, it’s only natural that her face and body show it. That’s why she’s completely uninterested in plastic surgery.

While promoting her new film Good luck to You, Leo Grande in an interview with The Wrap, the Cruella star spoke candidly on aging and plastic surgery, calling the growing trend of cosmetic procedures a “form of collective psychosis.”

“Why would you do that to yourself? I simply don’t understand,” she said. “I do honestly think the cutting of yourself off to put it in another place in order to avoid appearing to do what you’re actually doing, which is aging, which is completely natural, is a form of collective psychosis. I really do think it’s a very strange thing to do.”

Despite plenty of her peers undergoing these types of alterations, Thompson said she held the same beliefs about them when she was younger that she does today.

“I’ve always been a kind of card-carrying, militant feminist when it comes to women’s bodies and what’s been done to them, what we’re told to expect of ourselves, what we’re told to do to ourselves,” she explained.

These opinions of Thompson’s are especially relevant to her work in Good Luck to You, as the film puts her body on display. Her character Nancy is a widow who hires an escort to explore experiences that her marriage lacked, which makes for a lot of intimate scenes—including one in which she's fully nude.

“It’s very challenging to be nude at 62,” she said in a separate interview for Sundance Film Festival’s Cinema Cafe discussion. “[My character] stands in front of a mirror alone and she drops her robe.”

“It’s very challenging to be nude at 62.”

The whole experience led her to reflect on beauty standards in and out of Hollywood. “Nothing has changed in the dreadful demands made upon women in the real-world world but also in acting,” she proclaimed. “This thing of having to be thin is still the same as it ever was, and actually in some ways I think it’s worse now.”

With that being said, Thompson doesn’t think she could’ve done the nude scene at any other time in her life. “I don’t think I could've done it before the age that I am,” she said. “And yet, of course, the age that I am makes it extremely challenging because we aren’t used to seeing untreated bodies on the screen.”

True Thompson fans won’t be surprised to hear her speak so honestly—it’s not the first time she’s been vocal about these subjects. In a May 2022 interview with British Vogue, she called turning 60 a “watershed” moment for her.

“I think what I feel principally now is free,” she said.

If the Love Actually star has taught us anything, it's that all parts of aging (and our bodies) are worth celebrating.

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Kayla Blanton

Kayla Blanton is a freelance writer-editor who covers health, nutrition, and lifestyle topics for various publications including Prevention, Everyday Health, SELF, People, and more. She’s always open to conversations about fueling up with flavorful dishes, busting beauty standards, and finding new, gentle ways to care for our bodies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University with specializations in women, gender, and sexuality studies and public health, and is a born-and-raised midwesterner living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two spoiled kitties.