These days, more and more women are choosing to have kids in their mid-to-late 30s and beyond, with the Cleveland Clinic reporting last year that roughly 20% of people in the US now have their first child after 35.
And naturally, more and more famous women are publicly sharing their journeys of welcoming kids later, too — so here’s a handful of those celebrities who have shared their candid reactions to falling pregnant in their 40s:
1. In July, Anne Hathaway admitted during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers that she and her husband, Adam Shulman, were “shocked” when she found out she was pregnant with her third child at age 43. “It’s amazing. I mean, we knew what we were doing, but…we were so shocked it worked!” she quipped.
Anne also told Access Hollywood, “There’s always hope until there’s not, but when you get to a certain age, that hope looks like 1 to 2%. So we just decided to see where life took us, with a very, very healthy, realistic expectation, which was very low.”
“We’re overjoyed because we just know, from personal experience, not everybody gets this,” she added, “and certainly not when you want it — sometimes not ever.”
2. Last year, Claire Danes recalled feeling “shame” when she accidentally fell pregnant with her third child at 44. “I was so old when that happened. I was 44. I didn't think it was possible. I really didn’t… I was terrified,” she shared on the SmartLess podcast. “I did not foresee this at all. And it was weird. Suddenly, I felt, like, a funny shame. Like I was naughty… I had been caught fornicating past the point I was meant to.”
Claire later told Amy Poehler on her podcast Good Hang that she actually broke down over the phone to her OB-GYN when she found out she was expecting. “It was a pure...meltdown,” she shared. “None of this was by design. I didn't know it was physically possible. I was 44.”
“I had two strong cocktails at dinner, and then, first thing in the morning, hit CVS. It was bold, caps lock, ‘PREGNANT’…and I burst into tears,” she recalled.
3. Mandy Moore, who welcomed her third child at age 40, made it clear last year that the concept of “advanced maternal age” is totally normal to her. When asked by Not Gonna Lie podcast host Kylie Kelce if she’d received lots of opinions about her third pregnancy, Mandy said, “Yes and no. I mean, I feel like having my third child at 40, [there’s] this term ‘geriatric pregnancy’ that's thrown around. I think, at least in my experience, so many of my friends are having kids later in life, whether it's by choice or it's by circumstance or biology.”
“I think the thing that I had the most trouble with is just, like, this system in general kind of treating us as this anomaly that we're too old and we're too complicated or high risk, and really, it's like, ‘Nope, we're just human beings,’” she continued. “I feel like it's just such an outdated label. So it's less about how I think the people and the perceptions they may have had, like the people in my life; it was just more about the healthcare system in general. It feels like such an outdated one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to just women in general.”
4. Back in 2013, Halle Berry described falling pregnant in her 40s as “the biggest surprise.” In an interview with CNN, the Catwoman star shared, “This has been the biggest surprise of my life, to tell you the truth. Thought I was kind of past the point where this could be a reality for me. So it's been a big surprise and the most wonderful.”
The following year, Halle — who gave birth to her daughter, Nahla, at age 41, and her son, Maceo-Robert, at 47 — said on The Ellen Show, “I was really, you know, kinda premenopausal, so to have this happen was a huge [shock].”
5. Gwen Stefani gave birth to her third child, Apollo, at age 44 — something that she described as a “miracle surprise” after she was “desperate” to welcome another baby. “I really wanted to have another baby. I really did. And I couldn't, and I was old. And then my oldest boy, Kingston, comes up to me. He's like, ‘Mommy, I really want you to have a baby.’ I said, ‘I'm sorry, your mommy's too old to have a baby now,’” she recalled back in March. (Gwen shares sons Kingston, Zuma, and Apollo with her ex-husband Gavin Rossdale.)
6. In 2019, Milla Jovovich admitted that falling pregnant at age 43 filled her with very mixed emotions. “After I found out I was pregnant 13 weeks ago, I had a mixture of feelings ranging between complete joy and utter terror. Because of my age and losing the last pregnancy, I didn't want to get attached to this potential baby too quickly,” she wrote on Instagram in 2019, referring to the emergency abortion she’d undergone a couple of years prior.
7. Tori Spelling revealed in 2016 that she was expecting her fifth child at age 43. “It was a total surprise,” she said before adding that she and her then-husband, Dean McDermott, “always wanted a big family,” and that she was “really excited.”
8. Natalie Portman, 45, announced earlier this year that she’s expecting her third child. Speaking with Harper’s Bazaar in April, she said it was “a privilege and a miracle” to fall pregnant at this point in her life, adding, “I grew up hearing about how hard it is to get pregnant. I have so many people I love who’ve had such a hard time with it that I want to be respectful around that as well. It’s such a beautiful, joyous thing, and it’s also not an easy thing. So I know how lucky it is. I’m very aware, and I’m very grateful. I have deep appreciation and gratitude.”
9. And finally, Hilary Swank — who welcomed her twins Aya and Ohm at age 47 — told People in 2024 that she “wasn’t ready to have children” in her 20s or her 30s. “I was 47 when I got pregnant, and I feel like I have a lot more patience, and I've done a lot of my own personal work to be the type of mother I want to be, whereas it would've just been different in my twenties and thirties,” she said. “I can give differently [now].”
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