In 2023, actress Andie MacDowell turned 65 and took due note of another milestone: She had been living in Los Angeles, California, the United States for 10 years.
“I moved there because my daughter Sarah Margaret who was going into the 12th grade at the Professional Children’s School in New York, wanted to be in the same place where her sister Rainey was, and Rainey was in LA,” MacDowell, 68, said, referring to actress Margaret Qualley and actress-singer Rainey Qualley. (She also has a son, Justin, who lives in Montana.)
Over that decade in Los Angeles, MacDowell had made a few friends, but “I’m a pretty quiet person. It was hard for me to find my place there 100%. I felt I had to do more in my life besides wait for my children to need me,” said MacDowell, whose credits include the movies Sex, Lies, And Videotape, Groundhog Day and Four Weddings And A Funeral. She stars in the Hallmark Channel’s time-travel drama The Way Home, now in its fourth season.
A cabinet and paintings at a corner in the home.
MacDowell found her place on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, a resort area she had frequently visited – she is a South Carolina native – and had loved more on each successive stay.
A few months after her 65th birthday, she bought a five-bedroom house there, one that overlooked a pond and seemed to disappear into the surrounding maritime forest. No one could see her house; she couldn’t see anybody else’s house.
MacDowell seems similarly well situated.
“I’ve met so many people I can’t keep up with them,” she said. “It’s just extremely social and that’s nice for me, because I’m a single person,” added MacDowell, who has been married and divorced twice.
“I like being a single person, you know, I enjoy my own company. The whole thing just works for me.”
Audubon sterling silver from Tiffany & Company owned by MacDowell.
The house came furnished. She gave some of the contents to her son and some to a friend, and has since filled it, as she put it, “with some cheap furniture and a few nice pieces”, among them carryovers from previous residences.
A 2008 portrait of MacDowell’s children by Asheville, North Carolina-based artist Michele Mitchell is the focal point of the dining room.
“It’s what I spent more money on than anything in my entire life,” MacDowell said. “My kids were very sweet about the whole process. It was a very special gift.”
Rainey, then 19, and Margaret, then 14, were both wearing Alberta Ferretti dresses that belonged to their mother, and were pinned and tucked for the occasion.
“My son had a black eye,” MacDowell added, “and the only thing I regret is not painting in the black eye.
MacDowell with her dog, Daisy, at her home.
“I have a huge shell collection,” MacDowell said, pointing to a crowded side table in the dining room. “My favourite thing to do is walk in the morning, and usually my friends are all talking and I just like to be quiet. I just look at the ocean and I look for shells.”
MacDowell mostly left the kitchen alone when she moved in but, because she’s a fan of painted floors, got rid of the cherry wood planks that were there, exchanging them for a diamond pattern of sandy brown and off-white.
MacDowell was 28 when she began buying pieces of Audubon sterling silver from Tiffany & Co.
“I use it every day,” she said. “Particularly when I moved down here at 65, I knew I had limited time. It was like, ‘Time’s running out. Use the silver!’”
The tufted rocking chair in which MacDowell rocks her grandchildren.
She is honouring family tradition: Her mother and grandmother used silver for formal Sunday dinners.
“We weren’t rich, but you would think we were, eating with silver.”
On a counter and wall adjacent to a utility sink in the kitchen are photos of MacDowell’s grandchildren and photos from the weddings of MacDowell’s children.
“This is sort of the marriage place,” she said. “It’s like my warm and cosy place keeping my family with me.”
A caramel-coloured tufted rocking chair, sitting in an adjacent room, was acquired by MacDowell at an auction to benefit transgender youth.
The first pair of Prada shoes MacDowell ever bought, kept as a memento at her home.
“I bought it after drinking a little bit of champagne, and I’m glad I did,” she said. “The rocker doesn’t fit the space, but I love it. It’s where I rock my grandbabies,” MacDowell added, referring to Rainey’s daughter, Bluebell, and Justin’s two daughters, Cozette and Josephine.
In the living room, the wallpaper backing the open shelves is printed with trees.
“I want to feel like I’m in nature,” MacDowell said.
The curtains pick up the sylvan theme, and a peacock rattan chair is one of MacDowell’s favourite perches. The first pair of Prada shoes she ever bought are on display among the books, awards and family photos.
Shells collected by MacDowell during her morning walks on the beach.
“My daughter Rainey paints,” MacDowell said.
The living room includes Rainey’s portrait of her sister, Margaret.
The sun room got the most rehab work in the house. MacDowell got rid of an “ugly” built-in desk, painted the floor, lowered a window and added French doors for easy access to the back porch.
“It’s really light and airy in here,” she said. “I tell friends, ‘You can do puzzles in here, you can read and you can drink champagne’.”
MacDowell mostly left the kitchen alone when she moved in, but got rid of the cherry wood planks that were there, exchanging them for a diamond pattern of sandy brown and off-white.
An egret painted by a local artist hangs in the primary bedroom on the first floor.
“I just love the colours,” she said, adding that the curtains “are very romantic”.
“My friends must want to laugh at me because I wear my Hermes scarves to the beach and when I go hiking. I’m sure they think it’s bizarre to be wearing them in the dust,” said MacDowell, who began collecting the scarves in her 20s.
“But what am I gonna do? I’m gonna die and then they won’t have been worn. I keep them at the end of the drawer and wear them all the time.”
Family photos line a wall in MacDowell’s home.
Family photographs hang in the hall upstairs along with magazine photo covers of MacDowell with her children. Justin is with her on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, Margaret is with her on the cover of InStyle. Another photo shows MacDowell with her father: “They cut my hair in a pixie because I was the fourth girl and my father would take me hunting.”
A friend stops by routinely to leave fresh produce on MacDowell’s front porch and also the occasional tomato pie. She has biking friends and walking friends and kayaking friends, and she has become involved with the nature conservancy.
She has no need to take vacations, because, she said, “I travel all the time for work. My vacation is staying home. I want to be home.” –©2026 The New York Times Company