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Justine Bateman opened up about her views on aging. The actor says she doesn’t care if people think she looks “old.” She’s content with the way she looks, and she isn’t about to change for anyone. Here’s what the Family Ties star shared.

How Justine Bateman discovered people think she looks ‘old’

Justine Bateman attends an event while wearing a dress with silver designs.
Justine Bateman | Emma McIntyre/SHJ2021/Getty Images

Bateman shared how she first discovered people thought she looked “old.” The actor says she was doing a Google search when she made the discovery.

“When I was writing my first book, Fame, I made the mistake of Googling myself, which I don’t suggest for anybody,” Bateman tells Time. The autocomplete was, ‘looks old.’ So [the search results said] ‘Justine Bateman looks old.’ At the time, I was 41 or 42, and I thought, ‘Really? I didn’t think I looked old.’”

Bateman says she initially thought everyone was right about the way she looked. However, she changed her mind and began to accept her appearance. When she wrote her follow-up book, Face, she says her goal was to learn how not to react to other people’s opinions of her appearance.

Why Justine Bateman doesn’t want plastic surgery

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Bateman tells 60 Minutes Australia she could have procedures to smooth out her wrinkles, but she prefers not to. She doesn’t want to “erase” the last couple of years of her life.

“You can do all of that [surgery],” says Bateman. “But I feel like I would erase not only all of my authority that I have now, but also, I like feeling that I am a different person now than I was when I was 20. I like looking in the mirror and seeing that evidence.”

Justine Bateman wants people to ‘forget about’ their faces

Bateman says she wants people to stop paying so much attention to how they look. She doesn’t believe having wrinkles will stop people from reaching their dreams.

“I’m saying, forget about your face,” says Bateman during her interview with 60 Minutes Australia. “Get at the fear that is making you think that the fact that your face is wrinkled is going to [cancel] out a bunch of opportunities for you.”

Bateman says our views on aging have more to do with our fears. “The problem is not the face; the problems are these fears,” says Bateman during her interview with Time. “If you change the face, you’re still going to have these fears.”

At one point in the interview, Bateman is asked if there is “beauty in aging.” She responds by saying she doesn’t really care what others think.

“When you say, ‘Is there beauty in aging?’ aren’t you really saying, ‘Do you think it’s possible for other people to find aging beautiful?’ I just don’t give a s***. I think I look rad. I think my face represents who I am. I like it, and so that’s basically the end of the road.”

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