Here’s what Tina Fey says is the greatest challenge about being an actress
When we think about Tina Fey, we can’t help but smile super widely. Between her time on SNL as a writer and actress (not to mention co-anchor of Weekend Update), to 30 Rock, to her impact on film (Mean Girls, Baby Mama, Sisters), her memoir Bossypants, and everything in between—friendship/award-show-hosting goals with Amy Poehler, anyone?–Fey has given women a hard-working, hilarious role model, and we’re constantly applauding her.
But just like every woman (especially in Hollywood), the 45-year-old Fey faces the familiar pressure of feeling like she has to keep up an unrealistic appearance of youth.
“The greatest challenge for me as an actress is just getting older,” Fey told Town & Country magazine for its April issue, which she covers. “Trying to play the scene at hand while also trying to hold your face up. Fast-forward to being 68, and it’s a glorious act of bravery.”
“There were people on the Globes in their twenties who were so Botoxed,” Fey—who hosted the Golden Globes with Amy Poehler in 2013, 2014, and 2015—added in the interview. “In their twenties! We’ve been so conditioned now to never see a real human face, one that moves, with its original teeth. Sometimes we forget that there is a choice. I choose not to do this. It’s like wearing multiple pairs of Spanx: Good for you, not for me. Not mandatory.”
Fey, whose dark comedy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot premieres this Friday, also voiced her opinions on Carrie Fisher’s amazing Twitter response to her body shamers late last year.
“I thought it was heartbreaking, and also smart of Carrie to be, like, ‘This hurts,’” Fey said. “Because a lot of times we talk about the politics of it, the unfairness of it, which is all true, but I think it’s clearer to people when you go, ‘Hey, that hurts my feelings.’”
She also got super frank about Hollywood’s pay-gap problem, sharing what she and Poehler had to say during their recent press tour for Sisters when interviewers constantly asked the co-stars/BFFs how they felt about the present being such a great time for women in comedy.
“People really wanted us to be openly grateful—‘Thank you so much!’—and we were like, ‘No, it’s a terrible time,’” Fey said in her April Town & Country interview. “‘If you were to really look at it, the boys are still getting more money for a lot of garbage, while the ladies are hustling and doing amazing work for less.’” Hear, hear!
You can read the entire Town & Country interview with Fey and see the stunning accompanying photos here. And I think I speak for all of us when I say I know what I’ll be seeing at the movie theatre this weekend. Tina Fey as a TV reporter in early 2000s Afghanistan? Sign us up.
