- So Brooke, you created a platform
for women over 40 starting a new chapters,
which I think is fantastic.
- It is called Beginning Is Now,
and I really just, especially during Covid, I thought,
I'm 56 right but I feel stronger, I feel more powerful,
I feel more confident, I don't feel as-
- I feel like that happens with age.
- [Brooke] And that's- - Yeah.
- [Brooke] The part to me that's so amazing.
But when you're over 40 and you look at what's out there,
we're not marketed too, I don't know-
- But there's not like a lot of like movies or TV shows,
it's usually like a specific, like younger or then older.
It's like, there's nothing generally in that gap-
- Yeah, it's like 20s
or Helen Mirren and she's gorgeous but-
- [Kelly] Yeah, oh my God, I hate her.
Like who looks like that?
- [Kirsten] I think one of the things is though too,
I feel like I'm at this age too as an actress
where I'm like, do I just age nicely?
Or like, I think I just gotta get old
so that I can keep with having good parts too.
Like I kinda have to just like not fall
for the praise of Los Angeles and just kinda age normally
so you're doing a-
- Well you're doing a beautiful job of it.
- I keep working though.
I feel like to get interesting parts,
you know what I mean?
- It is, it's a hard thing and I've talked to a lot of...
And you know what?
I never had that conversation with actors,
it's always actresses and it's-
- Oh yeah.
- And it's always 'cause there's a harder thing
that's always put on women.
- [Kirsten] Like what, yeah, how it like, what route?
- [Brooke] Yep, Netflix was really-
- [Kelly] And how natural can I age?
- Well you don't want your, half your conversation
about your part,
like the supporting conversation to be like,
"Oh what face work did she do?"
You know what I mean?
Like, which would be devastating to me.
- Is that a real-
- [Brooke] Oh yes. - [Kirsten] Yeah.
- Well what Netflix,
when they originally talked to me about it,
it was a woman who in this one particular division said,
"We are interested in women over a certain age."
Over 40, they're saying.
Because there're empowered women in there.
And she said, "That's what we're gearing towards."
So it's really, it's lovely that to hear a network
say that that's their focus, you know,
and it's a section of Netflix, you know,
but it is, they, and that's what she wants to do,
this executive, and I was so happy that, you know,
they weren't trying to make me eat 30.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it's, I was my age and I was acting my age
and in myself, and really just there's pride in it,
and I love that there's starting to be representation
like that in at least in these movies.
- And as a woman that's about to be 40, I love watching it.
Like, I don't really relate, sorry, anymore
to a lot of the younger, like, you know what I'm saying?
There's, there's like,
there should be like sections for all of it.
Like, we like to watch different things,
and maybe people, I don't know our own age doing stuff.
So yeah. - And there's romance,
you know, and there's humor and there's, you know, it's,
there's, it's parts of it that are sort of just sexy enough,
you know what I mean?
But, but it's, and it's presenting women
with all of their facets, you know?
And I think that that's...
It took me decades to grow into myself
and not compare myself or say,
"Oh God, they want me to do this,
or I'm not this enough or I'm not that another."
- Well the reason why you probably did that though
is 'cause people put that on us when we're young.
- [Kirsten] They do, especially, yeah, are you kidding me?
Of course, yeah, all of us
like had different versions of that.
You probably had it the worst, Brooke, right?
I mean- - I mean, I wasn't, I mean,
there was no social media when I was-
- That's true. - You know?
I mean, it was...
I had my own set of different things
that I had to grapple with, insecurity wise,
but it was, you know,
I was called a face of a decade, it's like-
- And that's a lot of pressure.
- Who decides that, you know? - It's a lot of pressure-
- Feel free to call mine the face of the decade.
I don't know who decides, but no, that's a lot of pressure-
- The arbitrary ridiculousness of it.
So what I did was became the class clown, self-deprecate.
- Oh me too. - Oh look at me, look at me,
waka, waka, waka.
And I need to diffuse the air, I need to have,
not be threatening to women, I need to-
- Oh my God, that's how I feel sometimes too, yeah.
- And then you start to believe it,
then you start living in your comments about yourself
and your self-deprecation and you know,
and that's not healthy either.
And so it's about finding that balance of saying,
you know, I mean, by virtue of getting older,
I would be considered a disappointment
because I would've had to have died when I was, you know,
18 or something like that to, it's not funny,
but like to preserve
what everybody has on their psyche about me, right?
- Because at the end of the day,
sometimes people view you as a product
and not the actual person, so they just see one thing,
yeah, totally. - And so I had to,
throughout my life really just reveal myself emotionally
and in all ways so that that's what I could own, you know?
So it wasn't just- - I feel the same,
like same in a different way too, yeah.
Yeah, I was lucky working with Sofia Coppola
at such a young age, because at 16,
when you don't feel good about yourself,
she made me feel beautiful.
So I had that to kind of take me through the like
more masculine, like, energy films and things.
I didn't look to anybody or dress in a certain way
on the carpet that like I had to be sexy.
I dressed the way I wanted to dress, you know?
- That's a beautiful thing to have that influence
so from a woman at a young age.
- I got lucky that I had that at such a young age, yeah.
- [Brooke] And I never had that,
and I got male directors who loved the men-
- We might edit this out.
I had a photographer literally look at me, and I was,
it was literally right after American Idol,
and it was like 20 years ago, and it was, he was like,
"Man, you would be so pretty if you lost 20 pounds."
And I was like, "Oh my God,
how much weight do you think you need to lose
to be attractive?"
- Awesome that you said that by the way!
I love that you said that back to him.
(audience applauding)