Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Shania Twain, and others have been vocal about the need to raise awareness about menopause. (Images via Getty Images/Yahoo Canada Illustration)
Menopause can be a lonely experience for many women. Experts suggest there are more than 100 perimenopause and menopause symptoms that take a significant toll on a woman’s physical and mental health. From hot flashes and brain fog to lesser-known ailments like dry eyes, phantom smells and heart palpitations, no two women experience menopause the same.
Over the past decade, there’s been a significant increase in the public conversation surrounding menopause to help alleviate the shame and private suffering attached to a natural period of a woman’s life. In addition to public health campaigns, some of the most influential voices in Hollywood are leading the charge to normalize and raise awareness for treatments that improve quality of life.
In honour of World Menopause Day (Oct. 18), we’ve gathered quotes about menopause and aging from our favourite stars who are helping to change the narrative surrounding women’s health, sexuality and aging in a powerful way. Keep reading to learn what celebrities like Shania Twain, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, Oprah Winfrey and more have said.
Shania Twain, 60
Shania Twain has spoken about the unexpected gifts of menopause. (Photo by Mathew Tsang/Getty Images)
In September 2023, Twain credited menopause with empowering her to embrace her body and pose nude on the cover of her album, Queen of Me.
“I think menopause was a very good thing for me because there were a lot more things changing in everything about me physically that I had to very quickly come to terms with,” she told TODAY. “Menopause taught me to quickly say, ‘You know, it may only get worse. So, just love yourself now. Just get over your insecurities — they’re standing in your way. And fear is standing in your way.
Twain also addressed menopause weight gain in 2024 during an interview with The Mirror, saying she wasn’t phased.
Real Talk menopause
“Do you think I care if I’ve got a roll? No, I’m not focusing on that. I’m happy when I look in the mirror, I’m not cringing when I look in the mirror,” she said. “What’s unfortunate is that, when I was younger, I was doing that. When I started to realize I had been missing out on whatever I am, I knew it was time to make a major change.
Salma Hayek, 59
Hayek said there is “no expiration date” for women as they age. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit)
Hayek spoke candidly about her menopause journey during a 2021 appearance on Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith.
“I have gone through [mood swings and hot flashes], I still kind of am, but you’ve got to notice those moments and take a deep breath and kind of say, ‘OK, it’ll pass. You got to hold it together.’ And the hot flashes aren’t fun,’” she added.
Salma Hayek
Hayek shared a message to women of all ages about how menopause and aging don’t devalue women.
“There’s no expiration dates for women. That has to go,” she said. “Because you can kick ass at any age. You can hold your own at any age, you can dream at any age, you can be romantic at age. We have the right to be loved for who we are at the place that we are. We’re not just here to make babies, we’re not just here to baby the man. We’re not just here to service everything and everyone around us and then when the kids go away … it’s almost like expiration date for you as a woman. It’s a misunderstanding that has been going around for centuries.”
Naomi Watts, 57
Actress Naomi Watts was in her mid-30s when she began experiencing perimenopause symptoms.(Photo by Daniele Venturelli/WireImage)
Watts was 36 and trying to get pregnant when she learned she was in perimenopause. The actress told Katie Couric Media in December 2024 she “nearly fell out of her chair” when she learned she was in the early stages of menopause.
“I felt ashamed and like it was the end of my dream of becoming a mother, the end of my acting career, the end of, well, everything,” she said, adding that she eventually went on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to help alleviate menopause symptoms.
Naomi Watts on menopause
“Mood swings, night sweats, and migraines… I was feeling like I was spiralling out of control,” The Feud: Capote vs. The Swans star told Hello! in July 2023. “I truly believe that if menopause hadn’t been such an off-limits topic when I first started experiencing symptoms, I would’ve had an easier transition.”
She continued, “I was part of a cycle that desperately needed to be broken. There was a lack of open conversation and resources to help women navigate the changes we go through. That’s why I’m now so passionate about raising awareness and encouraging more honest conversations.
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, 50
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau spoke to Yahoo Canada about taking HRT for menopause symptoms. (Photo by Izzy Nuzzo/SHE Media via Getty Images)
Earlier this year, the author and mental health activist spoke to Yahoo Canada about menopause and other women’s health issues.
“I’m in perimenopause right now, but falling into menopause,” she said. “People think, ‘I still have my menstrual cycle, so I’m not in perimenopause.’ Wrong. It can be sleep disturbances, anxious thoughts, tachycardia, burning mouth sensation…. There are a lot of different symptoms in different women, and we can’t judge each other for what we’re going through.”
Kim Cattrall, 69
Kim Cattrall said she feels “empowered” to discuss menopause. (Photo by Pierre Mouton/Getty Images for Nina Ricci)
The Canadian Sex and the City star told Cosmopolitan in 2014 that she felt “empowered” to discuss menopause.
“I don’t think it’s shameful. It’s as natural as having a child — it really is; it’s part of life,” a then 58-year-old Cattrall said. “Physically, it’s part of how we’re made; hormonally, it’s how we’re constructed; chemically, it’s how we work. Like anything in nature: The seed is planted, it grows, it comes to fruition, after a period of time it starts to change and age, and it’s scary.”
“You wonder, ‘Will I be attractive, desirable, feminine? What is [the] next chapter of life?’ I think it’s one of the reasons why it’s so taboo is because we don’t talk about — it’s too frightening even to talk to [a] doctor about it,” Cattrall continued. “I want to reach out to women to encourage them to educate themselves about this time in their lives.”
Yahoo Lifestyle Canada and Dove present ‘Real Talk: Menopause,’ a stigma-breaking series that delivers knowledge and support to women when they need it most.
Melissa Grelo, 48
Melissa Grelo experienced heart palpitations, a symptom of perimenopause. (Photo by Jeremychanphotography/Getty Images)
The Social host told Yahoo Canada in June 2025 that she struggled with perimenopause-related anxiety and heart palpitations. Angered by the lack of resources available, Grelo has made it her mission to educate and empower women about perimenopause and menopause through her podcast, “Aging Powerfully with Melissa Grelo.”
“That was very terrifying….I wish someone along the way could have said, ‘You know, given your age, this could be perimenopause,'” she said. “…I just thought, I’m a fit person, I work out all the time. Why do I feel like I’m having a heart attack and not getting an answer?”
Oprah Winfrey, 71
Oprah Winfrey said HRT helped alleviate brain fog during menopause. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
Like Grelo, Winfrey has said that heart palpitations were the key to realizing she was in perimenopause.
“For two years, I didn’t sleep well. Never a full night. No peace. Restlessness and heart palpitations were my steady companions at nightfall. This was back when I was 48 to 50. I went to see a cardiologist. Took medication. Wore a heart monitor for weeks,” Winfrey wrote in an essay for O Magazine in 2019.
At 53, Winfrey began experiencing brain fog that prompted her to try HRT.
“Mine comes in cream form; I just rub it on my arm. All it took was one application, and the world returned to Technicolour,” she wrote. “I could feel my countenance shifting. For the first time in years, I was sleeping the whole night through.”
Tracy Moore, 50
Tracy Moore was in “denial” about perimenopause symptoms. (Photo by Mathew Tsang/WireImage)
The Canadian TV personality spoke to Yahoo Canada earlier this year about how she was in “a little bit of denial” when she first began noticing the signs of perimenopause.
“I used to be a cold girlie…I was always cold,” she said. “Then all of a sudden I wasn’t. It wasn’t hot flashes; in general, I was hotter.”
“The biggest telltale sign for me was my inability to tamp down irritation. I’m the calm parent. I’m the patient one….,” Moore continued. “All of a sudden, I was the one arguing, and so I thought to myself, ‘Hold on, I’m at that age. This could be menopause.'”
Halle Berry, 59
Halle Berry said vaginal dryness due to menopause was initially misdiagnosed as herpes. (Image via Getty Images)
Berry has become a vocal advocate for menopause awareness. The Oscar-winning actress founded an online menopause platform called Respin following her experience with frustrating symptoms, like vaginal dryness (which was misdiagnosed as herpes) and brain fog.
Halle Berry discussing menopause.
“The lack of sleep is really real — what [menopause] does to the brain. I have flooded my laundry room three times because I go in there and then I forget why I went in there. I turn the water on, heat up the dog food, get busy and then there’s three feet of water in my laundry room. I would have never done that before this stage of life. The brain fog is real,” Berry told Women’s Health in February 2025.
“As women, we’ve been told that it’s just what happens when you get older—you just have to white-knuckle it, grin and bear it,” she added. “Well, no, that’s just not good enough.”
Michelle Obama, 61
Michelle Obama said HRT helped with hot flashes. (Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
The former first lady of the United States has spoken candidly about using HRT to help with severe hot flashes.
“It was like somebody put a furnace in my core and turned it on high,” she said during a 2020 episode of The Michelle Obama Podcast. “And then everything started melting. And I thought, ‘Well this is crazy, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do this.’ … What a woman’s body is taking her through is important information. It’s an important thing to take up space in a society, because half of us are going through this but we’re living like it’s not happening,”
Gwyneth Paltrow, 53
Gwyneth Paltrow said menopause led to insomnia and anxiety. (Image via Getty Images)
Paltrow discussed menopause-related anxiety during a March 2025 episode of her “Goop” podcast.
“I’ve always been a real sleeper,” Paltrow said, adding that during menopause, she “went through a particularly bad time with it.”
“There were nights where my anxiety — like, I just thought it meant, ‘Oh, you’re not gonna be able to sleep because you don’t have enough progesterone or whatever.’ I would just wake up [and] I would get crushed with anxiety, which I’ve never had in my life,” she said. ” And I would lie in bed thinking about every mistake I’ve ever made, every person’s feelings I ever hurt, like, every bad…you know. And I would be up, like, for six hours. It was crazy. I feel like hopefully I’m coming out the other side.”
Jane Fonda, 87
Jane Fonda has written about feeling “more joyful” with age. (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP) (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP via Getty Images)
While some women fear menopause, Fonda said she feels “more joyful” than she did in her 20s and 30s.
“Forties can be really hard for women because we’re moving into a momentous, tectonic shift, a hormonal shift that for — not all, but many— women, can feel like we’ve lost ourselves and may never get those selves back. Perimenopause it’s called,” Fonda wrote on her website in 2013.
“Truth be known, we don’t get those selves back,” she said. “But the selves we do get back can be better, braver, surer. We care less what others think of us. We tend to be kinder to ourselves. We stress less. We see commonalities between ourselves and others more than differences. We’re more forgiving, less judgmental.”
Jane Seymour, 74
Jane Seymour has touted the benefits of HRT to remedy painful sex. (Photo by Jason Mendez/Getty Images for AMC Networks/Acorn TV)
Seymour has been open about using HRT was a “game-changer” to help deal with menopause symptoms that made having sex painful.
“There is medication that can help and like everything in life, you find a different way of dealing with things. You find a way that works for you or you and your partner in whatever fashion and there are lots of different ways to find pleasure in life. And to be a whole woman,” she said in a 2023 interview with Hello!.
“Menopause is a taboo subject, no one wants to talk about aging, especially women because they’re doing everything they can to look 20 or 30 years younger,” the Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman actress continued. “So the last thing they want to do is to talk about that and there’s always been this whole thing that when you turn 50, you’re not having babies anymore, so now you’re kind of useless. You’re on the fence, you’re done.”
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