Elaine Hendrix spent part of her 50s learning ballroom routines in front of millions of people. The quieter change, she says, has happened away from the dance floor.
At 55, the Parent Trap actress told PEOPLE that getting older has brought both perspective and a new willingness to let go of things she once thought mattered. She summed up the feeling by saying she is “so much more settled in my own skin.”
Hendrix spoke Sept. 10 at the Celebrating Women of Emmy Season event in Los Angeles, an evening built around changing how women in midlife and beyond are represented onscreen and in the culture surrounding Hollywood.
There is also a practical example behind what she is saying. Last year, at 54, Hendrix returned to intensive dance training for Dancing With the Stars and reached the Season 34 finale, decades after an accident had helped redirect her professional life away from dance and toward acting.
Hendrix Says Wisdom Came With Caring Less
Hendrix said one of the best parts of reaching her 50s is finally having some of the wisdom she assumed she possessed when she was younger.
The other change is more liberating. Hendrix said she simply does not care about as many things as she once did, because age has made it easier to distinguish between what she genuinely needs and expectations she carried for years without questioning them.
That combination of perspective and letting go is what she means by feeling more at home in herself. Instead of framing aging as an attempt to preserve an earlier version of her life, Hendrix described it as discovering which parts no longer deserve her energy.
She Wants Women in Midlife to Take Up Space
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TheWrap’s Celebrating Women of Emmy Season event, held at the Fairmont Century Plaza, brought together actresses, directors, writers and producers while focusing on the cultural treatment and representation of women in midlife and beyond.
Hendrix told PEOPLE that women have historically faced pressure to become less visible as they age while youth and virility have been valued differently in men. She sees the current moment as one in which women have more room to resist that expectation and insist on remaining visible.
She specifically acknowledged Gloria Steinem, the feminist activist who died Sept. 2 at 92, and the generations of women whose work helped create that freedom. The evening supplied its own more theatrical statement. Constance Zimmer declared that women over 50 were “f—ing badass” before diving into the rooftop pool, while Hendrix reunited on the carpet with Dancing With the Stars host Julianne Hough.
‘Dancing With the Stars’ Put That Idea to a Test
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Hendrix had already been making a similar argument through action. At 54, she joined Season 34 of Dancing With the Stars with professional partner Alan Bersten and became only the third woman over 50 to reach the show’s finale, following Jennifer Grey and Kirstie Alley.
Her return to dancing carried additional history. Hendrix had pursued classical dance professionally before being struck by a car while riding a bicycle in Los Angeles in 1992. The injuries helped push her career toward acting, and she has said she continues to deal with their physical effects more than three decades later.
The ballroom presented new challenges as well. Hendrix suffered a rib injury during Halloween rehearsals that prevented her from performing live that week, but she returned to the competition and ultimately reached the five-couple finale.
For her final freestyle, Hendrix and Bersten performed to “I Hope I Get It” from A Chorus Line, with Lisa Ann Walter and Andy Richter joining the number. She finished Season 34 in fifth place.
Hendrix later told PEOPLE that one of the biggest lessons from Dancing With the Stars was discovering more of what she was physically and mentally capable of than she had expected. She had entered the competition with demanding expectations for herself and said afterward that she surpassed them.