‘Family Ties’ Alum Justine Bateman Gets Blunt on Avoiding Plastic Surgery

Former Family Ties star Justine Bateman explained her decision to avoid plastic surgery, Botox, fillers, or other injections and instead age naturally in a new interview. Bateman, 57, was featured in a recent 60 Minutes Australia episode about women over 50 who have embraced their age. The actress starred as Mallory Keaton on Family Ties and recently directed Olivia Munn in Violet.

When journalist Amelia Adams asked her if she ever considered cosmetic procedures, she admitted it was tempting. “Sure, you can do all of that,” Bateman said, reports Today. “And then I feel like I would erase not only all my authority that I have now but also I like feeling that I am a different person now than I was when I was 20.” Bateman, whose younger brother is Jason Bateman, said she likes “looking in the mirror and seeing that evidence.”

Bateman went on to say she feels “sad” for younger women who have cosmetic procedures since they are “not just enjoying life.” They are “distracted from the things that they’re meant to do in life with this consuming idea that they’ve got to fix their face before anything else can happen,” Bateman told Adams.

“When you say, ‘Is there beauty in aging?’ aren’t you really saying, ‘Do you think it’s possible for other people to find aging beautiful?’ And like, ‘I just don’t give a s—,’” Bateman bluntly told Adams. “I think I look rad. I think my face represents who I am. I like it and so that’s basically the end of the road.”

This was not the first time Bateman spoke about the pressures women in the public eye face when it comes to aging. She wrote about the topic in her 2018 book Fame: The Hijacking of Reality and her 2021 follow-up, Face: One Square Foot of Skin. While promoting Face, she told PEOPLE she would never have cosmetic procedures, even after seeing online comments that she looked old.
“I thought my face looked fine,” Bateman explained. “And then because of some of the fears I had, unrelated to my face, I decided to make them right and me wrong… I became really ashamed of my face, ridiculously so.” She then looked inside herself to explain her own fears.

“I find it really wrong that women right now are absorbing this idea that their faces need to be fixed,” she told PEOPLE. “I realized my face is only going to get older. So why not take care of whatever fear I have attached to that.” She later called getting plastic surgery “just people pleasing” to avoid being criticized by others. “The more you do that, the further away you get away from your true self,” Bateman said. “It doesn’t work for me.”