Tune In: Actress Judy Greer's Best Tips To Look & Feel Strong With Age

Judy Greer is a national treasure. She's one of the all-time great character actors—and everything she's cast in becomes instantly more watchable. The actress is perhaps known for her work in scores of fan-favorite rom-coms, comedies, and dramas—and most notably, she's earned a solid reputation for playing the ultimate on-screen bestie. Although the real fans know her talents far exceed the BFF label, after chatting with her it does make sense why she so often gets cast in those sorts of roles. She's warm, relatable, generous, funny, and whip-smart—all the things you want in a best friend, no? After listening to this episode of Clean Beauty School, I think you'll agree. 

Greer joined me to talk about her wellness journey, her experience with perimenopause, and why women feel underserved by the conventional health care system. We also get into how she cares for herself—and how her priorities have shifted overtime. 

"[As I've gotten older], there was this shift away from 'how I look' into 'what do I want my life to be like?' I want the feeling of strength, mobility, and stretchiness—and the ability to keep up my lifestyle," she says. "It's this shift away from vanity towards strength and movement."

Perimenopause is different for everybody. And there are dozens of symptoms associated with it, many of which might have other causes as well. So the experience can be confusing for those going through it—especially if there's a void of information.

This is why, Greer notes, we have to talk about them. 

And it's not just about external conversations—the internal ones matter too. "There are 36 symptoms. If you look at the list of symptoms1, you're probably having all of them, some of them, or one of them, at some point in time," says Greer, who is a founding partner of the perimenopausal brand Wile Women (learn more here). "So you really need to start listening to your body. We're so focused on productivity that we don't listen to our bodies. We're not slowing down to understand how we feel."

When we talked about how she's currently taking care of herself—much of the conversation was about how she wants to feel throughout her day. 

For example, prioritizing sleep above all else: "Finding out about how alcohol affects your sleep, especially as you age, made me change my habits," she says. "Now I'm like, 'What's more important—having a glass of wine or having a good night's sleep? Because I don't get both anymore." 

"I've noticed my body changing, and now I play that game in my head of, 'Is X worth Y?'" she says.

As we chatted about in the episode, Greer became passionate about perimenopause education largely due to the fact that she struggled to get answers for herself.

"[A big part of this is] can you get someone to listen to you? And can you get someone who's willing to take the time over several appointments to deal with the issues as they come up? And do you have time to go to several appointments? Do you have the insurance that will let you go to several appointments?" she says. "I think that's why so many of us start looking outside conventional medicine into whatever we can get our sticky fingers on because it can feel like no one's listening to us." 

The other piece of the puzzle is getting comfortable with these conversations too. Because right now, lots of folks still struggle with how to talk about it. "Looking to the future, we need to have a better vocabulary about women's bodies in general. For a long time, we weren't supposed to talk about things that weren't girly or ladylike. So we've missed a lot of conversations," she says. "When we can talk about this stuff—talk about all of it—we can better handle whatever comes our way."