Still feeling like an imposter at 50? Lanterns star Kelly Macdonald has some news for you

If you had told us three decades ago that the doe-eyed, rebellious teenager Diane from the 1996 cult classic Trainspotting would one day be dishing out the ultimate life advice for women hitting their fifties, we might have choked on our Hooch. But here we are. Kelly Macdonald has officially entered her second act, hitting the big 5-0, and frankly, she is serving up exactly the kind of no-nonsense, retrospective wisdom we all desperately need to hear.

Recently, while promoting her shiny new gig as a town sheriff in the DC Studios series Lanterns, Kelly was asked by a PA journalist what advice she’d give her younger self. Her answer? “Don’t worry so much.”

It sounds simple, almost cliché. But then she elaborated with a truth bomb that should resonate deep in the soul of every woman over fifty who has ever second-guessed herself: “It was so overwhelming to me, and everybody seemed so cool. I would tell myself, ‘You were cool too.’”

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Let’s be brutally honest for a second. How much of our youth – our twenties, our thirties, and even the supposedly secure terrain of our forties – did we waste worrying that we weren’t ‘the cool guys’? How many hours did we squander agonising over whether we were smart enough, thin enough, successful enough, or just plain enough to be in the rooms we were already standing in?

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But the real kicker in Kelly’s confession is that this sneaky little demon of imposter syndrome doesn’t just magically evaporate when you hit 50, even if you have a CV that boasts absolute masterclasses like Boardwalk Empire and Line of Duty. Acting opposite Hollywood heavyweights like Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre in her new HBO series, Kelly admitted she still gets a twinge of the old insecurity.

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“I didn’t feel like one of the cool guys, and to a certain extent I still feel that with the cast that I’m working with here,” she confessed, adding she couldn’t even believe her name was on the list for the role. “But yes, I need to start believing that I’m one of the cool guys.”

Newsflash, Kelly: You are cool. And newsflash to the rest of us: So are we.

Lanterns is out and can be streamed on HBO Max and Now.