‘Please don’t touch them’: Julianne Moore says she ‘destroyed’ her eyebrows as a teenager

Julianne Moore has opened up about her beauty tips and mishaps over the years, including the incredibly relatable time she overplucked her eyebrows as a teenager.

In a recent interview with The Sunday Times, the 61-year-old actress explained how her outlook on beauty and appearance has changed as she’s grown older. Now, she’s learned to embrace her freckles and red hair, while still being less consumed with her looks.

“I think it’s because you have other things that you are interested in, such as family, relationships, work or your community. Being myopic about the way you look recedes,” she told the publication. “I don’t think it goes away entirely, I don’t think there is a person in the world who couldn’t care less, everybody cares somewhat. But the degree to which you are interested in that, and the fruitlessness of that, becomes apparent as you get older.”

Although Moore’s freckles and bright red hair have become her trademark, she explained that her looks made her feel separated from those around her as a child.

“When I was growing up in the US, it felt as if no one had freckles. I just wanted to look like every other tanned American kid,” she said. “I hated being the one that couldn’t go to the beach or who had to wear long sleeves. I think that stayed with me a bit.”

Moore went on to describe something called “the mimetic theory of desire,” in which people mimic what they want according to the desires of others. “I still see somebody in a backless dress with no freckles and I’m like, ‘Oh! I would love that!’” she added.

Not only has Julianne Moore’s career in film and television spanned nearly three decades, but the actress is also a mother to her two children – Caleb, 24, and Liv, 20. Now, the Hunger Games star is encouraging her daughter to not make the same beauty mistakes that she has made in the past.

“Liv has red hair and the most gorgeous dark eyebrows and I tell her, ‘Please don’t touch them. I really mean it. And don’t let anybody else touch them, either,’” said Moore, adding that “destroyed my eyebrows.”

“As a teenager and as a young adult I kept plucking them, bleaching them, doing all sorts of things to them, so they are really completely gone. They are drawn on now,” she admitted. “And it’s difficult to find the right kind of colour too. Most brands want to make your eyebrows red. There actually aren’t many redheads who have red eyebrows. Mine are light brown-blonde.”

Moore has previously spoken out against the expression “ageing gracefully,” which is often applied to women, saying it is “totally sexist” because it is not something people have control over.

“Is there an ungraceful way to age? We don’t have an option of course. No one has an option about ageing, so it’s not a positive or a negative thing. It just is,” she told As If magazine in July 2021. “It’s part of the human condition, so why are we always talking about it as if it is something that we have control over?”