Why Christina Hendricks turned 50 and changed her attitude
B ang on time, Christina Hendricks Zooms in from her sunlit Los Angeles living room. Cheekbones like summer peaches. Famous hair loosely scraped back. Disarming smile. Oh, and there's a small dog with its paws on her shoulder, a cockapoo named Triscuit. 'I just woke from a little afternoon nap,' says Hendricks, casually fabulous in a striped T-shirt. 'Today has been a lot of life maintenance. Getting the dogs groomed, a friend dropping by with styling things, dealing with the pool. Stuff that catches up with you.'
It feels like Hendricks is cataloguing a non-glamorous day to put me at ease. It's 6am where I am, in a Thai hotel room, coming live with ghoulish lighting to one of the world's most-celebrated beauties. She waves away apologies for my wrinkled sundress and bed-hair: 'Don't worry. I'm flattered you got up so early to talk to me.'
The warmth feels authentic. While her most famous character, Mad Men 's Joan Harris (née Holloway), moved through the world like a shark, Hendricks is charming, generous and funny. Old-school vivacious. Interesting and interested.
The domestic admin is happening ahead of Hendricks and her husband, cinematographer George Bianchini, heading to their other home, in New York City. While Bianchini is nowhere to be seen when Hendricks twirls her screen to showcase their home – a wall of framed posters and photos, books, a comfortable sofa – he's on his wife's mind. 'We spend nearly every waking moment together and never get tired of each other,' she says. 'He leaves for an hour and I'm like, 'I miss you.' He's my absolute best friend.'
The pair met on the set of crime-comedy Good Girls, in which Hendricks starred from 2018-21, but Bianchini is 'quite serious at work so we didn't really talk'. In 2020, they had a Cobb salad lunch at New York institution Barneys, and 'that's when the romance started'. Initially long distance, the relationship surprised them, she says. 'We didn't expect it.' With matching tastes in music, food and humour, they proposed to each other in 2023, and their New Orleans wedding in April 2024 was, the bride says, 'gothic, moody and sexy'.
'We spend nearly every waking moment together and never get tired of each other. He leaves for an hour and I'm like, 'I miss you.' He's my absolute best friend.'
CHRISTINA HENDRICKS
The couple's first wedding anniversary was followed weeks later by another milestone for Hendricks – she turned 50. Girlfriends threw a small party that left her weepy, 'looking around, seeing the support I've had for 20 years', then Bianchini masterminded a three-day extravaganza in Las Vegas.
The birthday itself? Less great. Hendricks was 'not super pleased. I'm not like, 'Yeah, woo, 50!' I'm like, 'All right, here we are. Here we go.' '
For the dual Screen Actors Guild Award winner and six-time Emmy nominee, a half-century means 'a lot of introspection about where and how I want to be. I'm still unpeeling it.' The bittersweet part is less ''Oh, I look or feel older' and more, 'I really like it here. How do I want to spend the rest of this beautiful time?' ' Instead of a clichéd glow-up, Hendricks is letting go. 'There's been a shift – an 'I don't give a f---edness'. I'm less concerned about what other people think.'
Along with a rich personal life, Hendricks is buoyant about season two of The Buccaneers, Apple TV+'s bold feminist drama. Based on Edith Wharton's unfinished novel, The Buccaneers follows five rich American girls crashing 1870s British society. Think corsets, chaos and estates, with a mostly female cast, all-female soundtrack and a female director, Susanna White. Filming took place in Spain and Scotland, and Hendricks says falling back into a rhythm with her younger co-stars, including Kristine Froseth, Aubri Ibrag and Mia Threapleton, was easy. 'Everyone came in wanting to make this series even better than season one.'
Hendricks plays the unconventional, strong-willed Patti St. George, whose social standing as the mother of the Duchess of Tintagel clashes with her midlife reckoning with divorce, status and independence. 'Patti's story is a modern take on what someone in the 1800s would experience,' she says. 'But showing it in a relatable way to shed some light on how difficult it has been for women for this long. We are in 2025, seeing a very familiar courtroom-drama type of behaviour: the scrutiny, the doubt, the power play that can happen between men and women in the legal system.'
Hendricks knows first-hand how staggeringly hard divorce is. She split from her first husband, Geoffrey Arend, in 2019 after a decade together. 'I've had that moment of being under someone else's sky and feeling disconnected from your heart,' she says. 'But there's also something empowering in saying, 'All right, we have made this decision. And now we have to move forward.' '
Resilience runs through her story. Born in Tennessee to a psychologist mother and a forest ranger father, Hendricks grew up in Oregon and Idaho. Her first jobs were in a beauty salon and menswear store, and by 18, her 'unusual and quirky' looks led to modelling work in Japan and Italy.
Acting lessons helped her transition from commercials to TV. That's her hand (but not her stomach) on the poster for the 1999 Best Picture Oscar winner American Beauty. Early roles in TV series such as Beggars and Choosers and The Court led to her 2007 breakout part of Joan in Mad Men.
At first, the character terrified her. 'I called [creator] Matt Weiner and asked, 'Is she just a bitch?' He said, 'No, she's trying to help.' Once I could see how hard she worked to be a wife, mother and great at her job, I started to relate to her more.'
Audiences didn't just relate – they adored Joan. 'They were like, 'Go girl!' They found her honesty refreshing,' says Hendricks. 'I thought maybe this strong woman could be me, too. She gave me confidence.' That confidence helps Hendricks navigate an industry she believes is a struggle. She doesn't elaborate but says, 'Some things happened a few years ago that I'm still dealing with emotionally. I didn't feel I had power. I wasn't being heard. That's a power-play women still face.' Tougher now, Hendricks is more open and less afraid to speak her mind: 'I stick up for myself.' She does this for others, too, through supporting LA's rape-treatment centre, and mentoring women in film.
Some of her best career advice came from Carol Kane, her co-star on Beggars and Choosers, Hendricks' first TV series, when the cast was told to run and form a tableau in front of the camera. 'She told me, 'Honey, you're just as important. Get up front and show your face.' '
The bigger life message from that moment? 'Be respectful of people who've been there longer. Learn from them,' Hendricks says. 'But also, you're there for a reason. Don't be afraid to say it out loud. Ask the questions you need to ask.'
It's a cue to say I want to ask questions that might feel reductive, but what the hell – when will I get the chance again to find out what skincare products Christina Hendricks uses? She laughs and says she'll shut me down if we veer into 1950s housewife territory.
Style first. Audiences have seen Hendricks in everything from 1960s chic to corsets. At home, it's 'easy-breezy, French girl' wide-leg jeans and striped tops. 'And you wouldn't believe how many silk floral soft things I own,' she says.
That snowy complexion takes work, she says. 'I have dry skin, so I use balm, not cleanser. Thick, creamy things – I pile 'em on.' Exercise? 'The worst. I studied dance for many years so I respond to Pilates, as it uses body positions and stretching and strength that I understand.'
While she works in an industry that worships youth, Hendricks doesn't feel she's judged or lost work because of her age, although she's self-aware enough to only go for roles she's right for. 'But I have noticed a difference [between cast members of various ages] when I'm on The Buccaneers set. We communicate differently, relate differently, work differently.'
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One role she's played often is that of a mother. In real life, Hendricks is child free by choice (kids are 'a lot of work', she's said previously) but speaks with clarity and care about motherhood, especially as it relates to the mother-daughter relationships portrayed in The Buccaneers.
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Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
You mightn't know her yet, but actor Philippa Northeast is a star to watch
A baby brushtail possum has just fallen down the chimney into Philippa Northeast's rented cottage outside Adelaide. The actor takes a towel and wraps it around the joey, then places it beside a hot water bottle in a box, which she carefully leaves outside, having seen the mother looking for the youngster that fell from her back. 'The poor little thing, I think it's OK,' the 30-year-old star of The Newsreader and Territory reports back to Sunday Life after a five-minute break in our interview. Seated again in front of her grey stone fireplace in the South Australian countryside, Northeast's hair is long and brushed back, and her green eyes uncannily match the painted mantle. 'It's moving and it's crying out for its mum,' she reports. 'Which is interesting because Mum is there but she's very wary.' The joey's sudden fall into Northeast's life is apposite, because we're talking about motherhood and the Melbourne-born actor's role in the new ABC series The Family Next Door, a drama based on Sally Hepworth's novel and filmed in Anglesea and Black Rock in Victoria. Northeast plays young mother Essie, who is living at home with her single mother Barbara (Catherine McClements) while she and her partner Ben (Tāne Williams Accra) struggle to save a house deposit. Essie says the unsayable about motherhood and her baby, George: 'I don't enjoy being a constant plaything or a food source or having no time and space to be me. I'm too selfish to be a good mother.' Convincingly portrayed by Northeast as emotionally fractured, Essie's state of mind creates concern for George's welfare among the family in their claustrophobic residential court. Northeast notes that Essie is diagnosed with postpartum depression in Hepworth's novel but not labelled as such in this screen adaptation. She says this is to make the character relatable to 'more women who have had challenges with motherhood that [don't] fall into a category that is diagnosed', such as loss of identity and feelings of isolation. The actor feels society places excessive expectations of perfection on motherhood. 'It's meant to be this thing that's life-changing and life-affirming and puts everything else into perspective,' she says, resting her chin on her hand in contemplation. 'But if you're not sure what your identity is prior to having kids, I think it can throw up some pretty big identity crises.' It's a theme turned over not just by her character but by Northeast herself. 'Globally and domestically, it's a precarious life, and no one knows what's coming next,' she says. 'Probably one of the most compassionate things you can do is ask yourself, 'Why do I want to bring kids into this world? And what will the impact be on me as well as on them?' 'I'm 30 now, and that really weighs heavily on my mind, particularly with the future that we all face. I want to be open enough to question a decision like that, rather than just following a path that's been trod by so many.' So, has Northeast come to a clear conclusion about having kids? 'No, I haven't,' she says. 'Growing up, I felt that was the thing you did and would happen. But now, as I get older, I am more open to questioning whether it's the right thing. I haven't got a clear answer either way, but I want to do the work to know why.' Northeast's partner is also an actor and the couple split their time between inner Sydney and a rural property to the city's south-west. Accompanying them is their small blue heeler, Rani, who is happiest chasing kangaroos on the farm. 'She is our everything, and the hardest thing to be away from when we're working,' says the actor, who declines to name her partner. 'We keep the personal details of our life pretty quiet, because it's just for us.' Northeast is residing in South Australia while she films a Netflix series remake of My Brilliant Career, in which she plays another character who is questioning women's traditional place in society, Sybylla Melvyn (a role made famous by Judy Davis in the 1979 film). Sybylla and Essie face the same dilemma, says Northeast: 'What is the cost and the compromise of marrying and having children in comparison to having your own mind and agency and identity?' Landing the role of Sybylla, Northeast continues, 'meant everything – she's such a beloved character, and so iconic. We're being true to the character people love in terms of her sheer determination, her humour, her naivety and her awe for the world. And her mind, of course.' Northeast found the novel fascinating, given that Miles Franklin began writing this 'blueprint of her life' while still a teenager, and was just 21 when My Brilliant Career was published in 1901. 'Miles Franklin did end up living the way Sybylla Melvyn was determined to live … she paved a road for women at a time that road just didn't exist.' In Northeast's career so far, there is one role in particular that put her on track for these challenging new opportunities – playing Kay Walters in The Newsreader. Directed by Emma Freeman, who also directs The Family Next Door, and set in the cutthroat TV newsrooms of the 1980s, The Newsreader' s third and final season aired earlier this year on the ABC. As the Berlin Wall fell in the series' denouement, Kay, the heroin-addicted daughter of a media magnate, united with her ambitious, controlling mother, Evelyn, to bring down conniving newsroom boss Lindsay Cunningham. 'I think Evelyn and Kay might have opened a magazine next,' speculates Northeast. 'Kay would have ended up editor, I feel.' Up-market, like Vogue? 'Probably more of a gossip magazine, to be honest! She would have turned into her mother's right-hand woman.' Born and raised in Richmond, in inner Melbourne, Northeast attended Steiner schools where she recalls playing Peter Pan at age 13. 'Any creative inkling that I have has been fostered from that stream of education,' she says. Her mum, Polly, is an English teacher, and her dad, Mark, is an accountant. She is close with her older siblings, Sam and Bridget, and has two younger sisters from her father's second marriage. Northeast has long been interested in psychology, so she began a Bachelor of Arts majoring in criminology in 2013. But after just one semester at Melbourne University she scored an audition, and then a role, on Home and Away. She subsequently dropped out of university, although during her four years playing Evelyn MacGuire in Summer Bay she completed a degree online with the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. After leaving Home and Away in 2017 and playing Sunny opposite R.J. Mitte in Steven Vidler's 2019 independent film Standing Up for Sunny, she went to the US to slog it out during the notoriously tough pilot-auditioning season. Then COVID hit. More than five years later, she looks back on that period philosophically; it taught her to cultivate a life outside work. 'It was a blessing in a way, because my partner and I moved to the country, we got a dog, we got chickens. We had a blissful experience where we weren't jetting around to auditions. [My career] momentum dropped out, but it gave me enough time to redefine myself as an actor who's more mature and ready to audition for different roles.' Loading Today, actors can live almost anywhere and mostly audition online. 'Facing rejection on the couch with your dog and with your loved ones is much easier than facing rejection in some sterile little half a bedroom you can't afford in LA with no friends and family,' she laughs. Like Sybylla, Northeast is forging a brilliant career on home soil, with a sharp instinct for empathy after the fallow work years. The light is falling now, and the actor must end the interview and turn her thoughts back to the fur baby in the cold gloaming. The Family Next Door airs on ABC and iView from August 10.
The Age
4 days ago
- The Age
You mightn't know her yet, but actor Philippa Northeast is a star to watch
A baby brushtail possum has just fallen down the chimney into Philippa Northeast's rented cottage outside Adelaide. The actor takes a towel and wraps it around the joey, then places it beside a hot water bottle in a box, which she carefully leaves outside, having seen the mother looking for the youngster that fell from her back. 'The poor little thing, I think it's OK,' the 30-year-old star of The Newsreader and Territory reports back to Sunday Life after a five-minute break in our interview. Seated again in front of her grey stone fireplace in the South Australian countryside, Northeast's hair is long and brushed back, and her green eyes uncannily match the painted mantle. 'It's moving and it's crying out for its mum,' she reports. 'Which is interesting because Mum is there but she's very wary.' The joey's sudden fall into Northeast's life is apposite, because we're talking about motherhood and the Melbourne-born actor's role in the new ABC series The Family Next Door, a drama based on Sally Hepworth's novel and filmed in Anglesea and Black Rock in Victoria. Northeast plays young mother Essie, who is living at home with her single mother Barbara (Catherine McClements) while she and her partner Ben (Tāne Williams Accra) struggle to save a house deposit. Essie says the unsayable about motherhood and her baby, George: 'I don't enjoy being a constant plaything or a food source or having no time and space to be me. I'm too selfish to be a good mother.' Convincingly portrayed by Northeast as emotionally fractured, Essie's state of mind creates concern for George's welfare among the family in their claustrophobic residential court. Northeast notes that Essie is diagnosed with postpartum depression in Hepworth's novel but not labelled as such in this screen adaptation. She says this is to make the character relatable to 'more women who have had challenges with motherhood that [don't] fall into a category that is diagnosed', such as loss of identity and feelings of isolation. The actor feels society places excessive expectations of perfection on motherhood. 'It's meant to be this thing that's life-changing and life-affirming and puts everything else into perspective,' she says, resting her chin on her hand in contemplation. 'But if you're not sure what your identity is prior to having kids, I think it can throw up some pretty big identity crises.' It's a theme turned over not just by her character but by Northeast herself. 'Globally and domestically, it's a precarious life, and no one knows what's coming next,' she says. 'Probably one of the most compassionate things you can do is ask yourself, 'Why do I want to bring kids into this world? And what will the impact be on me as well as on them?' 'I'm 30 now, and that really weighs heavily on my mind, particularly with the future that we all face. I want to be open enough to question a decision like that, rather than just following a path that's been trod by so many.' So, has Northeast come to a clear conclusion about having kids? 'No, I haven't,' she says. 'Growing up, I felt that was the thing you did and would happen. But now, as I get older, I am more open to questioning whether it's the right thing. I haven't got a clear answer either way, but I want to do the work to know why.' Northeast's partner is also an actor and the couple split their time between inner Sydney and a rural property to the city's south-west. Accompanying them is their small blue heeler, Rani, who is happiest chasing kangaroos on the farm. 'She is our everything, and the hardest thing to be away from when we're working,' says the actor, who declines to name her partner. 'We keep the personal details of our life pretty quiet, because it's just for us.' Northeast is residing in South Australia while she films a Netflix series remake of My Brilliant Career, in which she plays another character who is questioning women's traditional place in society, Sybylla Melvyn (a role made famous by Judy Davis in the 1979 film). Sybylla and Essie face the same dilemma, says Northeast: 'What is the cost and the compromise of marrying and having children in comparison to having your own mind and agency and identity?' Landing the role of Sybylla, Northeast continues, 'meant everything – she's such a beloved character, and so iconic. We're being true to the character people love in terms of her sheer determination, her humour, her naivety and her awe for the world. And her mind, of course.' Northeast found the novel fascinating, given that Miles Franklin began writing this 'blueprint of her life' while still a teenager, and was just 21 when My Brilliant Career was published in 1901. 'Miles Franklin did end up living the way Sybylla Melvyn was determined to live … she paved a road for women at a time that road just didn't exist.' In Northeast's career so far, there is one role in particular that put her on track for these challenging new opportunities – playing Kay Walters in The Newsreader. Directed by Emma Freeman, who also directs The Family Next Door, and set in the cutthroat TV newsrooms of the 1980s, The Newsreader' s third and final season aired earlier this year on the ABC. As the Berlin Wall fell in the series' denouement, Kay, the heroin-addicted daughter of a media magnate, united with her ambitious, controlling mother, Evelyn, to bring down conniving newsroom boss Lindsay Cunningham. 'I think Evelyn and Kay might have opened a magazine next,' speculates Northeast. 'Kay would have ended up editor, I feel.' Up-market, like Vogue? 'Probably more of a gossip magazine, to be honest! She would have turned into her mother's right-hand woman.' Born and raised in Richmond, in inner Melbourne, Northeast attended Steiner schools where she recalls playing Peter Pan at age 13. 'Any creative inkling that I have has been fostered from that stream of education,' she says. Her mum, Polly, is an English teacher, and her dad, Mark, is an accountant. She is close with her older siblings, Sam and Bridget, and has two younger sisters from her father's second marriage. Northeast has long been interested in psychology, so she began a Bachelor of Arts majoring in criminology in 2013. But after just one semester at Melbourne University she scored an audition, and then a role, on Home and Away. She subsequently dropped out of university, although during her four years playing Evelyn MacGuire in Summer Bay she completed a degree online with the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. After leaving Home and Away in 2017 and playing Sunny opposite R.J. Mitte in Steven Vidler's 2019 independent film Standing Up for Sunny, she went to the US to slog it out during the notoriously tough pilot-auditioning season. Then COVID hit. More than five years later, she looks back on that period philosophically; it taught her to cultivate a life outside work. 'It was a blessing in a way, because my partner and I moved to the country, we got a dog, we got chickens. We had a blissful experience where we weren't jetting around to auditions. [My career] momentum dropped out, but it gave me enough time to redefine myself as an actor who's more mature and ready to audition for different roles.' Loading Today, actors can live almost anywhere and mostly audition online. 'Facing rejection on the couch with your dog and with your loved ones is much easier than facing rejection in some sterile little half a bedroom you can't afford in LA with no friends and family,' she laughs. Like Sybylla, Northeast is forging a brilliant career on home soil, with a sharp instinct for empathy after the fallow work years. The light is falling now, and the actor must end the interview and turn her thoughts back to the fur baby in the cold gloaming. The Family Next Door airs on ABC and iView from August 10.
Sydney Morning Herald
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