‘The Testament’ Star Ann Dowd’s State of Grace

Reported by Vogue.

At 70, Ann Dowd has spent the better part of a decade becoming the actress everyone talks about—the one you can't look away from, whether she's terrifying or tragic or both. Her breakout role as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid's Tale earned her an Emmy and a devoted fandom (including a viral X account devoted to "Bald Ann Dowd"). Now she's returning to the character for the Hulu spinoff The Testaments, which finds Lydia running a finishing school for Gilead's young women—a softer version of the woman we knew before, yet somehow more unsettling.

But Dowd didn't set out to be an actress at all. At 18, she was premed, determined to become a surgeon, especially after her father's death during her senior year of high school. Grief made her resolve sharper. Then her roommate—grieving the loss of her own brother—asked a simple question: "Do you want to be a doctor?" Dowd's answer surprised herself. "No. I want to be an actress. What are you waiting for?" She auditioned to DePaul in Chicago and never looked back. For years, she waited tables while auditioning, watching classmates like Elizabeth Perkins hit premieres. At 29, sitting on her porch in frustration, she heard what she describes as a calm, deep voice tell her: "You will be all right. You will be 56." When she turned 56, she filmed Compliance—and everything changed, according to Vogue.

The Lydia Evolution

What fascinates Dowd now is how Lydia has shifted in The Testaments. The character remains complex—capable of pulling a trigger, willing to cross lines—but her methodology has transformed. "She has a little protection going on for Agnes," Dowd explains. "Her approach to the girls in general is much gentler." It's not softness born of redemption but pragmatism: there's no need for the fierceness and fear when you're building an institution. It's a masterclass in how power evolves.

Growing up Catholic, Dowd understands the guilt and shame Lydia carries—the sexual repression baked into rigid religious structures. She remembers questioning her own father about the logic of waiting until marriage: "If you can't have sex before you get married, it's going to be a problem. Why? Because they want to get married so they can have sex." That cognitive dissonance shaped her understanding of Lydia's fractured psychology, the ways trauma calcifies into cruelty, then possibly into something more measured.

Working with the young cast of The Testaments—actors in their late teens and early twenties—has reminded Dowd how far she had to travel to get here. They're more prepared, more trained, more grounded than she was at that age. But she carries something they don't yet: the knowledge that loss reshapes you into someone you wouldn't otherwise become.

Read the original at Vogue.