Brigitte Nielsen on midlife motherhood, miracle babies and finding her forever love

It’s a sunny June morning at a newly constructed open-air luxury shopping and dining development in LA’s Studio City, and Brigitte Nielsen doesn’t have to do much to prove she can still make an entrance. When the platinum-coiffed superstar arrives in a striped top, fitted white jeans and black heeled pumps, husband in tow, quiet recognition ripples through the crowd swilling smoothies outside Erewhon.

Whether they know the 59-year-old Dane from her days modelling for Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts, her roles in films such as the Rocky franchise and Beverly Hills Cop II or simply as a pop culture phenomenon, it doesn’t particularly matter: Nielsen is no stranger to the fact that life in the public eye comes with, well, a lot of eyes.

Nielsen, whose statuesque person was once used by the New York Times as the definition for the word ‘glamazon’, is not afraid to admit she enjoyed the attention. Today, she is refreshingly frank about the trials of ageing and her appreciation for medical interventions. “It’s so popular now to say ‘Oh we love to age gracefully, I love this, and I love that’. No. That’s untrue,” she says.

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“If you have been considered someone good-looking your whole life, and a sex symbol, and these many things, and then gravity takes its toll, the boobs are way down here, the crepe-y skin starts on the arms, the lines on your face are more and more? No, I don't like it!” She pauses for dramatic effect. “But! I accept it. I have to.”

One reason she can do so with a smile is that for the past 18 years she has had a loving and supportive partner, her husband Mattia Dessi, who is 15 years her junior. The other reason is that four years ago, after more than a decade of unsuccessful IVF attempts and what her doctor told her was a 2.5 percent chance of success, she gave birth to their daughter Frida, at age 54. To ignore or obscure the reality of the numbers involved would be thumbing her nose at a miracle.

“Of course, a baby at 54 is stretching it ,” Nielsen says, though she doesn’t think age has made her a lesser mother. She looks back at parenting in her early twenties, aghast at how young and inexperienced she was. “I tell women today, if you’re pregnant, and that's what you want , do it. But if you can, freeze your eggs, just wait. Just wait. Because you change a lot. Maybe don’t wait until you’re my age, but take your time.” Compared to her four sons from her previous marriages, she says, her most advanced pregnancy was by far her happiest.

It wasn’t just the pregnancy that was easier: the past few years with Frida and Mattia have been by far her best experience of motherhood. Dessi is the very picture of a doting and supportive husband. They met when Nielsen was going through a messy divorce. “Just ugh, it was so awful,” she says. But then she met the Sardinian Dessi. “I fell for him like a stupid 16 year old. I was 40 and he was 25. And I’d always had a man my age, or maybe a little bit older. But we finally got together and...” she throws up her hands in the universal sign for ‘what are you going to do’?

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“He made me feel so safe and so beautiful. I remember the first two years we were together. He was such a gentleman. He was so fun. It was so refreshing. And I remember thinking: now he’s going to change. Now the real him is going to come out. But he’s still the same way after 18 years. And listen, I’m not easy. I have my sides too. We all do. I just can’t imagine not being with him.”

Nielsen says she has always been something of a romantic. It just hadn’t worked out until now. “You have to take chances. Chances make you stronger,” she says. “ Like lately with Frida, she says ‘Mommy, I made a mistake,’ and I say ‘That’s good honey, we all make mistakes. That’s okay. That’s just a part of it.’” She laughs. “Little kids, little mistakes. Grown ups, big mistakes. Old women? Very old, big mistakes!”

She doesn’t rule anything out – “never say never, I mean I didn’t think I would be posing in pictures for Vogue like the ones I took 30 years ago” – but these days she’s happiest behind the camera. She and Dessi are currently in the early stages of producing a new action film with an all female cast and team behind it – a risk in today’s studio heavy film system, but given their recent streak of good luck, these are odds they’re willing to take. They’re also weighing out the future for Frida; namely whether they’d prefer to raise their daughter closer to their families in Europe, away from Los Angeles’ current homelessness crisis and the United States’ chaotic lack of gun control.

"I can't put her in school here and get a call one day that someone has shot all the kids,” she says firmly. “I cannot do that.” They hope to get clarity when they head back across the Atlantic this summer to vacation and visit with their families in Denmark, Italy and Spain, with their two rescue dogs, Betsy and Joker, in tow.

For Nielsen, it all comes back to creating the best possible life for her daughter. “She's such an impact on my life, it’s changed completely,” she says. “I’m like the yellow pages. I’ve had quite an amazing life of both ups and downs, but I’ve reached a solid plateau, and I've walked into this great chapter really gifted because I’ve been through what I’ve been through. "Negative experiences have actually turned out to be positive, she says, insofar as they’ve led to inner strength, a reconsideration of her priorities, and what she calls “all the things you need to know about loving yourself.”

Also, of course, there’s Dessi, who still surprises her with little gifts and love notes so poetic she teases him that he plagiarised them. “He’s always taken me for me, and he really adores me, we really adore each other, and we have a great trust. We don’t ever yell at each other, it’s very strange, I’ve been in very tumultuous relationships. I still can’t believe, knock on wood, after 18 years, he’s good at communication, he’s a great dad, he’s a great lover, he’s a great friend. He’s very funny.” She adds, “I know. It is the dream. The main dish on the menu is don’t give up.”