Naomi Watts Was Told She'd "Never Work Again" If She Revealed She Was Menopausal
She was warned that calling attention to her experience would be "career suicide."
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Naomi Watts is opening up about navigating menopause after she began having early symptoms when she was 36–and her fear that it would impact her career in Hollywood. In an excerpt from her upcoming book Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known about Menopause, the actress revealed the stigma around aging prevented her from speaking out about her experience, as she was told to do so would be “career suicide.”
Watts was first told that she was perimenopausal (having early menopause symptoms) by a doctor when she was having trouble conceiving. In an excerpt from her book shared with The Times, she recalled being in shock and thinking that she didn’t know much about menopause “except very likely the conclusion of my acting career, which got underway far later than most.”
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The Impossible star revealed that she’d already started to feel the industry pressure around aging, sharing, “When I’d hit my early thirties, people had started telling me that the time would soon come when I wouldn’t be able to play a leading lady any more.”
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Despite experiencing early symptoms like hot flashes and fatigue, the Stripes founder said she felt like she couldn’t open up about her experience at the time due to concerns about how it would impact her career. “I was told I would never work again if I admitted to being menopausal, or even perimenopausal,” she said. “Hollywood’s lovely term for such women was “unf*ckable”. I’d been warned ever since I started acting that calling attention to your age–when that age was not 23 or younger would be career suicide.”
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“We were all behaving as if between the seductress years and the grandmother roles, women just… I don’t know, vanished?” Watts added. While the stigma around aging is very much alive, she revealed a promising update behind the scenes: Breaking her silence on the taboo subject has encouraged other stars to reach out to her as they navigate the natural life change.
“One of the funniest things that’s happened as a result–random celebrities now text me regularly to tell me they’re in menopause,” she shared.
Fans can read more about Watts' menopause experience when Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known about Menopause is released on January 21.
Read the original article on InStyle
