Christina Hendricks on turning 50 and finding herself

B ang on time, Christina Hendricks Zooms in from her sunlit Los Angeles living room. Cheekbones like summer peaches. Famous hair loosely scraped back. Disarming smile. Oh, and there’s a small dog with its paws on her shoulder, a cockapoo named Triscuit. “I just woke from a little afternoon nap,” says Hendricks, casually fabulous in a striped T-shirt. “Today has been a lot of life maintenance. Getting the dogs groomed, a friend dropping by with styling things, dealing with the pool. Stuff that catches up with you.”

It feels like Hendricks is cataloguing a non-glamorous day to put me at ease. It’s 6am where I am, in a Thai hotel room, coming live with ghoulish lighting to one of the world’s most-celebrated beauties. She waves away apologies for my wrinkled sundress and bed-hair: “Don’t worry. I’m flattered you got up so early to talk to me.”

The warmth feels authentic. While her most famous character, Mad Men’s Joan Harris (née Holloway), moved through the world like a shark, Hendricks is charming, generous and funny. Old-school vivacious. Interesting and interested.

The domestic admin is happening ahead of Hendricks and her husband, cinematographer George Bianchini, heading to their other home, in New York City. While Bianchini is nowhere to be seen when Hendricks twirls her screen to showcase their home – a wall of framed posters and photos, books, a comfortable sofa – he’s on his wife’s mind. “We spend nearly every waking moment together and never get tired of each other,” she says. “He leaves for an hour and I’m like, ‘I miss you.’ He’s my absolute best friend.”

The pair met on the set of crime-comedy Good Girls, in which Hendricks starred from 2018-21, but Bianchini is “quite serious at work so we didn’t really talk”. In 2020, they had a Cobb salad lunch at New York institution Barneys, and “that’s when the romance started”. Initially long distance, the relationship surprised them, she says. “We didn’t expect it.” With matching tastes in music, food and humour, they proposed to each other in 2023, and their New Orleans wedding in April 2024 was, the bride says, “gothic, moody and sexy”.

“We spend nearly every waking moment together and never get tired of each other. He leaves for an hour and I’m like, ‘I miss you.’ He’s my absolute best friend.”

CHRISTINA HENDRICKS

The couple’s first wedding anniversary was followed weeks later by another milestone for Hendricks – she turned 50. Girlfriends threw a small party that left her weepy, “looking around, seeing the support I’ve had for 20 years”, then Bianchini masterminded a three-day extravaganza in Las Vegas.

The birthday itself? Less great. Hendricks was “not super pleased. I’m not like, ‘Yeah, woo, 50!’ I’m like, ‘All right, here we are. Here we go.’ ”

For the dual Screen Actors Guild Award winner and six-time Emmy nominee, a half-century means “a lot of introspection about where and how I want to be. I’m still unpeeling it.” The bittersweet part is less “‘Oh, I look or feel older’ and more, ‘I really like it here. How do I want to spend the rest of this beautiful time?’ ” Instead of a clichéd glow-up, Hendricks is letting go. “There’s been a shift – an ‘I don’t give a f—edness’. I’m less concerned about what other people think.”

Along with a rich personal life, Hendricks is buoyant about season two of The Buccaneers, Apple TV+’s bold feminist drama. Based on Edith Wharton’s unfinished novel, The Buccaneers follows five rich American girls crashing 1870s British society. Think corsets, chaos and estates, with a mostly female cast, all-female soundtrack and a female director, Susanna White. Filming took place in Spain and Scotland, and Hendricks says falling back into a rhythm with her younger co-stars, including Kristine Froseth, Aubri Ibrag and Mia Threapleton, was easy. “Everyone came in wanting to make this series even better than season one.”

Hendricks plays the unconventional, strong-willed Patti St. George, whose social standing as the mother of the Duchess of Tintagel clashes with her midlife reckoning with divorce, status and independence. “Patti’s story is a modern take on what someone in the 1800s would experience,” she says. “But showing it in a relatable way to shed some light on how difficult it has been for women for this long. We are in 2025, seeing a very familiar courtroom-drama type of behaviour: the scrutiny, the doubt, the power play that can happen between men and women in the legal system.”

Hendricks knows first-hand how staggeringly hard divorce is. She split from her first husband, Geoffrey Arend, in 2019 after a decade together. “I’ve had that moment of being under someone else’s sky and feeling disconnected from your heart,” she says. “But there’s also something empowering in saying, ‘All right, we have made this decision. And now we have to move forward.’ ”

Resilience runs through her story. Born in Tennessee to a psychologist mother and a forest ranger father, Hendricks grew up in Oregon and Idaho. Her first jobs were in a beauty salon and menswear store, and by 18, her “unusual and quirky” looks led to modelling work in Japan and Italy.

Acting lessons helped her transition from commercials to TV. That’s her hand (but not her stomach) on the poster for the 1999 Best Picture Oscar winner American Beauty. Early roles in TV series such as Beggars and Choosers and The Court led to her 2007 breakout part of Joan in Mad Men.

At first, the character terrified her. “I called Kate Halfpenny Matt Weiner and asked, ‘Is she just a bitch?’ He said, ‘No, she’s trying to help.’ Once I could see how hard she worked to be a wife, mother and great at her job, I started to relate to her more.”

Audiences didn’t just relate – they adored Joan. “They were like, ‘Go girl!’ They found her honesty refreshing,” says Hendricks. “I thought maybe this strong woman could be me, too. She gave me confidence.” That confidence helps Hendricks navigate an industry she believes is a struggle. She doesn’t elaborate but says, “Some things happened a few years ago that I’m still dealing with emotionally. I didn’t feel I had power. I wasn’t being heard. That’s a power-play women still face.” Tougher now, Hendricks is more open and less afraid to speak her mind: “I stick up for myself.” She does this for others, too, through supporting LA’s rape-treatment centre, and mentoring women in film.

Some of her best career advice came from Carol Kane, her co-star on Beggars and Choosers, Hendricks’ first TV series, when the cast was told to run and form a tableau in front of the camera. “She told me, ‘Honey, you’re just as important. Get up front and show your face.’ ”

The bigger life message from that moment? “Be respectful of people who’ve been there longer. Learn from them,” Hendricks says. “But also, you’re there for a reason. Don’t be afraid to say it out loud. Ask the questions you need to ask.”

It’s a cue to say I want to ask questions that might feel reductive, but what the hell – when will I get the chance again to find out what skincare products Christina Hendricks uses? She laughs and says she’ll shut me down if we veer into 1950s housewife territory.

Style first. Audiences have seen Hendricks in everything from 1960s chic to corsets. At home, it’s “easy-breezy, French girl” wide-leg jeans and striped tops. “And you wouldn’t believe how many silk floral soft things I own,” she says.

That snowy complexion takes work, she says. “I have dry skin, so I use balm, not cleanser. Thick, creamy things – I pile ’em on.” Exercise? “The worst. I studied dance for many years so I respond to Pilates, as it uses body positions and stretching and strength that I understand.”

While she works in an industry that worships youth, Hendricks doesn’t feel she’s judged or lost work because of her age, although she’s self-aware enough to only go for roles she’s right for. “But I have noticed a difference [between cast members of various ages] when I’m on The Buccaneers set. We communicate differently, relate differently, work differently.”

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One role she’s played often is that of a mother. In real life, Hendricks is child free by choice (kids are “a lot of work”, she’s said previously) but speaks with clarity and care about motherhood, especially as it relates to the mother-daughter relationships portrayed in The Buccaneers.

“You watch these [characters] grow up and finally understand what support means,” she says. “They’ve been supported by their mothers, and now it’s their turn to look after them. It’s beautiful to watch women do that.”

Season two of The Buccaneers premieres on June 18, on Apple TV+.

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