'Was afraid to come to Cannes': Andie MacDowell

Cannes [France], May 26 : Actor Andie MacDowell, who has attended the Cannes Film Festival for many years, made a surprising confession during an interview at the festival, reported People.

While talking about the ways fashion and beauty at the event have evolved over the years, the mother of three shared, "I didn't come to Cannes for promotion of the 1989 film 'Sex, Lies and Videotape'. I just had a baby. I was afraid."

It is unknown which of her children she was referring to, although her son, Justin, was born in 1986, and her daughter, Rainey, in 1990. She is also a mother to Margaret and has all of her children with ex-husband Paul Qualley.

The Way Home star, who attended Loreal's Lights on Women Award ceremony, is apparently hinting that she did not want to attend a major event like the Cannes Film Festival and make herself vulnerable to criticism for her postpartum figure.

MacDowell said it was culturally acceptable to be "cruel to women" at that time in Hollywood and elsewhere, but notes that times have changed.

"Because of the shift in our expectations and because we brought it out, they can't be like that to us anymore," she shared, adding that if she'd recently had a baby and Cannes was coming up in her schedule "now I wouldn't have been afraid to come."

At the time when she skipped the event, she explained, "I was, nursing, was really big and just motherly and whatever, and I didn't come. And that's a shame. It's a real shame."

"Now I embrace my womanly body. I think it's very sexy. But I think we couldn't feel sexy about ourselves because they were telling us that we weren't," she continued.

But women are no longer accepting that behavior, according to MacDowell.

"We've claimed it, and we've taken it back and we've said, 'But this is what it is to be a woman. We're not girls, we're women,' " the Groundhog Day star added, reported People.

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