Alison Steadman’s approach to ageing is everything you’d expect from the acting legend – but acceptance hasn’t always been easy for the star, and she still finds it quite a process on occasions.
We’re very outspoken of age acceptance and being age-positive. Helen Mirren is one of our age-positive icons, and she’s joined in the mission to promote a society that doesn’t make women feel they shouldn’t age, by the likes of Joanna Lumley and Kate Winslet.
The glorious Alison Steadman has some incredible things to say about it, too – and her words on ageing are everything you’d expect from the star. However, acceptance of her advancing years hasn’t always been easy for Alison, especially after she was told she’d be lucky to work past the age of 40.
Luckily for the universe, she is still working at the age of 78 and shows no sign of slowing down. A life without Alison working after 40 would’ve denied us of Gavin & Stacey’s Pam Shipman, Here We Go’s Sue Jessop, and so many more legendary roles.
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Reflecting on the thought of her career ending in her 40s, Alison told The Times, “But the thing is, life doesn’t end at 40. We all keep living – well, not all of us, obviously – but that thinking comes from the days of when, unless you were gorgeous and glamorous, nobody wanted to know.
“It’s all about men, isn’t it?”, she added truthfully. However, Alison did go through a period of age-related anxiety, and struggled with learning her lines during this time. Her concerns grew so overwhelming, that she even pulled out of some theatre performances because of them.
“You just get to an age where you think, ‘I can’t handle it. I’m not enjoying it anymore,'” she says, adding, “It was very sad and occasionally it still makes me sad, but that’s life.” Looking back on this time, the actress now asserts she has so much more confidence now that she’s older still.
“Now if I’m at a posh do, I do what I want, I drink what I want”
Alison Steadman
“And as we get older, we get more confident. I used to be so nervous, I’d get myself in terrible states,” she remembers. Recalling an anecdote about being frightened to use the wrong cutlery during formal dinners, she’s now thrown all of those worries aside and no longer cares what anyone thinks of her dinnertime etiquette.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“When I was 17, I went to a black-tie type dinner, and I was terrified of picking up the wrong fork or drinking at the wrong time,” the star shares, continuing, “Now if I’m at a posh do, I do what I want, I drink what I want. If I want to put a fork in something like this then I will.”
Although she’s growing in confidence with age, there are of course, bumps in the road. It’s likely that Alison speaks for many when she describes a fear of being lonely in her old age. She has been with her actor partner, Michael Elwyn, for 28 years, revealing sweetly, “I love our life together.”
But love like that can come at a cost and there could come a time when one of them goes on without the other, as Alison ruminates, “There’s a part of me, the older I get, where I’m thinking, I don’t want to be alone. I’m not a loner. Some people say, ‘Oh I love it. I just have a quiet time.’ I don’t like it at all.”
