In her latest film, Virginia Madsen plays a mother whose closeted gay son comes home to let the family know he’s dying from AIDS complications.

The 1980s have enjoyed a recent surge in relevance, from the spectacle of Ready Player One to the nostalgia of Stranger Things. But the era remains one marked in sadness in the history of HIV, a time when the still-misunderstood virus claimed countless lives.

Actress Virginia Madsen launched to stardom in the mid-‘80s thanks to roles in Dune and Modern Girls, becoming one of Hollywood’s sexiest stars. Even as her fame rose, she was well aware of the growing tragedy. Now, as she promotes her new film, the nostalgic AIDS drama 1985, Madsen remembers the loss of life, telling press and film festival audiences about the deaths of close friends — and an uncle she never got to truly know.

“It was talked about in hushed tones,” she recalls. “People were trying to hide when they were terribly ill. If somebody developed a bad respiratory infection, people wanted to move away. Nobody knew anything. They wondered, could you get it from touching or from tears?”

Families, including her own, suffered irreparable ruptures. She recalls her uncle Chicky, who moved away from the family’s small Illinois community while Madsen was just a child.

“I didn’t know him well, but remember him as a little kid because he was extraordinarily beautiful,” Madsen says. “But he had to leave and move to San Francisco. I was robbed of knowing him because no one could accept who he was in our community.”

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•• The beautiful Virginia Madsen features Winter Edition’s cover of Felix Magazine. The Power Issue 2017. Photos by talented photograher Nick Holmes. You can see HQ scans below!

“There’s still this myth that a film about growing older with pride isn’t as interesting as one about how to stay young. You only get to be old if you are lucky.” -Virginia Madsen

Virginia Madsen is a Golden Globe- and Academy Award-nominated actress known for her work in Sideways, The Astronaut Farmer, and The Number 23. Her mother, writer-director Elaine Madsen, has a wide range of creative projects on her list of achievements, including a new book of poetry and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary. In their new collaboration, I Know a Woman Like That, the mother-daughter duo join forces to take a close look at grace, age, vitality, and what it means to be a woman. ABILITY Magazine’s Chet Cooper and Nancy Villere caught up with the Madsens to discuss this ambitious and personal project.

Chet Cooper: Your film does a nice job of making a viewer more aware of a relationship between women as they age and their degree of invisibility in society. And, in many ways, I see that parallel how we tend to address social understanding and awareness about disability.

Elaine Madsen: Oh, yeah, I think there’s an attitude towards age that treats it as a disability. But in reality, aging involves recognition of abilities you didn’t know that you had, abilities that you have to find within yourself in order to deal with society. Bookshelves are filled with titles about how to stay young, and telling us all that there’s something wrong with not being young. But the purpose of this film, I think, is to show that the experience of aging can be wonderful, if you don’t get sucked into that mentality.

Virginia Madsen: My mother’s level of activity, of productivity, was exactly why I thought a project like this would work. Originally, when we put the idea together, she had said, “I’m far too busy. I’m going to Holland, and then I’m going here and there and I’m writing my book.” But that’s really what it’s about. Continue Reading