Francis McDormand, 57, takes on another idiosynchratic character in a four-part mini-series for HBO next month: “Adapted from Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of stories, ‘Olive’ is set in an unremarkable Maine town and traces several decades in the emphatically ordinary existences of its title character — a frumpy, grumpy math teacher — and her milquetoast husband, a couple played by Ms. McDormand and Richard Jenkins. It focuses less on uncommon events than on everyday grievances, on the compromises that accumulate as the years crawl by, the regrets that pile up.”
Her thoughts on aging: “We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species,” she said. “There’s no desire to be an adult. Adulthood is not a goal. It’s not seen as a gift. Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 — sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally. Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.” . . .
“I have not mutated myself in any way,” she said. “Joel and I have this conversation a lot. He literally has to stop me physically from saying something to people — to friends who’ve had work. I’m so full of fear and rage about what they’ve done.”
Looking old, she said, should be a boast about experiences accrued and insights acquired, a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”
