Kristin Davis and her Sex and the City co-stars recently celebrated the iconic show’s 25th anniversary, and they’ve carried on its legacy with the series spinoff And Just Like That, which debuts its second season on June 22. But a quarter-century is bound to bring changes—including physical ones, understandably—and Davis admits she’s been fighting a lose-lose battle over her use of facial fillers and other aesthetic treatments.
“I have done fillers and it’s been good and I’ve done fillers and it’s been bad,” the 58-year-old actor recently told The Telegraph. “I’ve had to get them dissolved and I’ve been ridiculed relentlessly. And I have shed tears about it. It’s very stressful.”
She explained that the pressure to maintain a youthful appearance in Hollywood is a double-edged sword. “It’s hard to be confronted with your younger self at all times,” she said. “And it’s a challenge to remember that you don’t have to look like that. The internet wants you to—but they also don’t want you to. They’re very conflicted.”
Before fillers, Davis tried Botox. “I was super excited, I didn’t have to have my lateral lines,” she recalled, referencing two lines across her forehead. “But I didn’t do anything else for a long time.” She also got her lips done. “No one told me it didn’t look good for the longest time,” she said, adding that “good friends” eventually let her know.
READ RELATED: 3 Things to Do When You Overthink Everything and Can’t Make Decisions
Now, she does her best not to let the criticism get the best of her, and in general, worries a lot less about it all. “It’s whatever. I can’t keep it up. I don’t have time,” she said. “You’re trusting doctors [but] people personally blame us when it goes wrong—[as if] I jabbed a needle in my face.”
Davis previously opened up about similar stress last year when she re-entered the spotlight with the premiere of And Just Like That. “I like to think there’s more to life than how we look, but it’s unavoidable in our culture that, as you age—especially as a woman—that how you look is a lot,” she told New Beauty. “It’s a whole, bigger cultural conversation we need to have, but, right now, it’s hard.”
She hopes that And Just Like That highlights the layers, nuance, and fun that the second half of life brings—elements that are far more palpable than a face wrinkle or two. “Why shouldn’t our lives still be interesting?” she asked The Telegraph. “Society expects you to diminish yourself as you age. But why should we? As Mary Steenburgen said the other day, ‘I’m still alive.’”
Related: