After more than three decades as a leading lady in Hollywood, Andie MacDowell is amazed and grateful that at 66, her career is still going strong. Playing the Landry family matriarch on Hallmark’s hit series “The Way Home,” now in its third season, is a gift MacDowell doesn’t take for granted.
“I get so excited when I’m walking onto set,” she told People in an interview published on January 17, 2025. “It’s nice at my age and after all this time to have that feeling of joy. I’m very conscious of it, so I try to share it and tell everybody how lucky we are.”
It’s one of multiple instances lately in which MacDowell has expressed how much she appreciates her role on “The Way Home” and that she’s been able to make a living as an actor for so long on so many beloved projects, from 1994’s “Four Weddings and a Funeral” to her last Hallmark series, “Cedar Cove,” which lasted three seasons.
Andie MacDowell Says She Knew She Wanted to Be an Actor Starting at Age 9
In late October, MacDowell told Hot Seat Interview podcast host Leo Brady that the fact she gets paid to play “make-believe,” the way she dreamed of doing when she was little, still “blows my mind.”
Recalling the aha moment she had while attending her very first play at age nine, MacDowell said, “I realized that grownups were playing make-believe and I was like, ‘Oh my god! You can do this when you’re an adult?’ And then I kind of started putting everything together … that this was something I could do and that I would enjoy doing.”
“I was highly creative and I was always putting on little productions,” she continued. “I didn’t have, at the beginning, a lot of formal training. I did take acting lessons when I was in college, and then I left for New York and, you know, just kept going, kept trying to make it happen. And it happened. It’s a miracle.”
MacDowell told Brady, “I still, to this day, I will go on set and say in front of everybody — with the crew there too, ’cause I always include them — ‘They pay us … and this is what we do! Look at us! Look at what we’re doing. It’s insane! It’s crazy. We’re just a bunch of weirdos, and this is what we do! Can you believe it?’ It still blows my mind.”
But MacDowell said her longevity in the business hasn’t come easily, recalling to People how harsh the reviews were for her first movie in 1984, “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.”
“I could have easily given up,” she told the outlet. “This business is really cruel. The things that they wrote about me were just terrible.”
“It’s a miracle I made it,” MacDowell continued. “I’m not going to take anything from me, but I had to overcome some really huge hurdles.”
Andie MacDowell Says She Loves How ‘The Way Home’ Storyline ‘Pulls at the Heartstrings’
One of the things MacDowell loves about her career is the chance to portray such rich characters and explore imaginative storylines, like with “The Way Home.”
“We’re thankful because we’re having a blast playing these characters,” she told Allen Media Group in an interview posted on January 15, “and this ongoing drama and tragedy and suspense with Jacob, I think, really pulls on people’s heartstrings, as it does the characters’.”
MacDowell also said she loves getting to be part of a story that taps into a desire every viewer has — to go back in time and see inside the history of their families.
“What makes it so special is the time travel, and going in the pond, and the fantasy,” she told Allen Media Group, calling the Landrys’ ability to time travel “a dream that I think everybody carries somewhere inside of their spirit.”
She added, “The possibility of being able to go to another time and what you learn about your family, I think it’s fascinating!”
Season 3 of “The Way Home” airs on Hallmark Channel on Friday nights, and each episode is available to stream the next day on Hallmark+ and Peacock.
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‘The Way Home’ Star Andie MacDowell Says She’s Living Her Childhood Dream: ‘It’s a Miracle’