Actor Rachel Hilson reflects on turning 30 in a new personal essay for&nbsp;L'OFFICIEL.&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s 9:45 p.m. I am sitting in an airport lounge in Dubai. It&rsquo;s the second of three lounges my partner and I are exploring over the course of a 19-hour layover. Before you ask, yes, we weighed all of the options; remaining at the airport was the smartest, safest, and (hopefully) the most cost-effective. Acknowledging the potential mundanity of our nearly day-long stay, we decided to gamify our lounge-hop by independently scoring each one on bathrooms, food, comfort, and tech convenience.
In hindsight, this one was the best of them all. My belly has been singing songs of rice, daals, curries, and potatoes. I&rsquo;m nursing three beverages: a glass of Ros&eacute;, an <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/benefits-activated-charcoal-beauty-wellness-skincare" target="_blank" rel="noopener">activated charcoal</a> juice, and a spearmint tea. I will finish none of them. Since losing my stacked travel cylinder of hair care products, my hair has retired to a haphazard bun. To my dismay, there&rsquo;s no edge control in this airport, but somehow everything else you could want is available into the wee hours of the morning. Who needs a lip/cheek tint and brow pencil at 3 a.m.? Apparently, I do.

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Lounge-hopping in a Dubai airport was not on my bingo card this time last year. It&rsquo;s the Ides of October. My birthday is about two weeks away. Thirty. There&rsquo;s something to celebrate here already&mdash;the mere fact that I am in Dubai, having just returned from the dreamy Seychelles for a wedding and before that a trip to Antibes for another wedding, then back to <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/pop-culture/new-york-fall-winter-2025-parties-events-popups-celebrities" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York</a> to perform in a show alongside <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/politics-culture/jane-fonda-activism-feminist-timeline-protest-arrest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jane Fonda</a> (!), and before that, the Dolomites with a friend who used to babysit me. In my experience, moments of transit offer a few things: copious amounts of downtime and people-watching, some stress, and lots of musings about my mortality.

There&rsquo;s something about being around people from all over the world that reminds you of how significantly insignificant you are (or perhaps the inverse&mdash;insignificantly significant&mdash;is less nihilistic). Airports, especially ones in the center of the world, are the closest we&rsquo;ll get to a purgatory; everyone&rsquo;s coming from and going somewhere, and what unites us is the liminal space we find ourselves in for this brief moment. The challenge is trying to find a sense of presence amidst the spirits of transit, lest we miss our flight. Or our opportunity to reflect.
And upon that reflection, I&rsquo;ve concluded that there&rsquo;s too much going on right now for me to have a birthday like this. Thirty? In this climate? I will say I&rsquo;ve been rehearsing being thirty this past year, in part because I find 29 to be a bit of a nothing age&mdash;embarrassing in a distorted, hyper self-aware sort of way.
Those 29 and over know what I mean. When you tell someone that you&rsquo;re 29, they immediately point to your being thirty soon. Be-here-now be damned&mdash;let&rsquo;s talk about being there. So I beat them to it. How old are you? My response, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be thirty this year,&rdquo; is both acknowledgment and surrender. In that moment, I become the thing&mdash;the grown-up that thirty forces and enables me to be. And they silently admire&mdash;or pity&mdash;my surrender: &ldquo;at least she&rsquo;s not holding on to her 20s,&rdquo; they might think. &ldquo;Your 30s are, like, the best,&rdquo; they inevitably say.

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I often think that if I weren&rsquo;t an actor with so much public personal information, I&rsquo;d feel differently about age. It&rsquo;s not that I would lie about it so much as I&rsquo;d just not mention it. Take the mythological Kara Young, 4-time Tony nominee and 2-time Tony winner, who has miraculously gotten away with being, well, ageless. No, really. Try to find her age online. You won&rsquo;t.
I understand why people lie about their age; I know a few. And whatever the reason, can you blame them? Just give me another year or two! I promise with a little more time, I can be more impressive for my age! Achievement after 30 is par. It&rsquo;s not that folks aren&rsquo;t applauding you, but you&rsquo;re also not waiting for it. And you can&rsquo;t dilly dally; you have to pick up the ball and head to the next hole with some urgency.
There are still several open windows of opportunity to be the youngest something. I&rsquo;m inclined to believe that Kara Young is the youngest person to have four consecutive Tony nominations, but how beautiful that we might never know&mdash;that this artist exists in a liminal space of her own, bound only to her bodily instrument and the diversity of characters who live inside it. Isn&rsquo;t that the beauty of this craft&mdash;getting to be anything and everything and allowing it to all be true?
Sometimes I resent not being more conspicuous about my age early on in my career. I just did a stretch of press to promote <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/film-tv/duster-jj-abrams-tv-series-cast-rachel-hilson-plot-release-date" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Duster</a> (on HBO Max; please watch it), and in several interviews, I was asked about my feelings on turning 30. I was surprised by the question each time&mdash;the way that I&rsquo;m always startled seeing &ldquo;The 29-year-old&hellip;&rdquo; in print. How did you know?! Perhaps I just don&rsquo;t think about being Google-searched.
The thing is, though, once midnight strikes and the sun returns on that late-October day (technically, I was born in the afternoon), I won&rsquo;t be poked and prodded about my age anymore unless to celebrate a preternaturally youthful glow. And even though I will feel practiced&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be 30 this year,&rdquo; &ldquo;I turn 30 this year,&rdquo; &ldquo;almost 30&rdquo;&mdash;I wonder what it will actually feel like to cross over.
Will I wake up with more prominent love handles? Will I be able to feel my eggs disappearing one by one or hear them begging to be frozen? Will my choices feel heavier&mdash;like physically heavier? Will destiny be breathing down my neck? Listen, Thirty, if there has to be some physiological change, I&rsquo;d like the volume on my intuition turned up, a different control for my anxiety&mdash;they&rsquo;ve been sharing one for too long&mdash;and I&rsquo;d like the uninvited voices muted. Please and thank you. I imagine Thirty rolling her eyes and telling me just to take my meds on time.

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I kind of like this distance. I like putting Thirty, the idea, over there because the truth is that if I take 30 to be my new identity, I&rsquo;ll have to be someone new in a year. Maybe it&rsquo;s just a matter of cultural semantics, but wouldn&rsquo;t it make more sense to say &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve experienced X amount of years&rdquo; than to say &ldquo;I am X.&rdquo; On the one hand, a yearly reinvention doesn&rsquo;t seem like a bad thing, but on the other hand, it undermines the time it takes to meaningfully evolve, which very well could take a day&mdash;or ten years. Maybe in a year, I will be ready for a new identity, but, if so, my hope is that I&rsquo;ll have been so busy integrating it into my life that it won&rsquo;t feel like I&rsquo;m starting from seed. Maybe I&rsquo;ll just need to repot.
I&rsquo;m not in denial of getting older, I promise. I know it&rsquo;s a privilege. I know the alternative. I was a couple of degrees of separation from several victims of the plane that crashed into the Potomac back in January. Though I didn&rsquo;t know Kiah Duggins personally, I was profoundly affected by what I had learned about her in the days after. Kiah dedicated her life to championing and advocating for voices in the margins. She encouraged young black girls to embrace their queendom. Her tragic passing, at age 30, was, of course, a reminder that our time here is limited but also of what can be accomplished in that limited time. I&rsquo;m sure she had more to say and do, and I still have trouble understanding why these things happen. But what I do know&mdash;what I&rsquo;m learning as I mature&mdash;is that every year is an opportunity. To fucking do something. Anything. To be better for myself. To be better for others.

Rachel Hilson as a child. Courtesy of Rachel Hilson.

I think it can be a worthy exercise to travel to the depths of one&rsquo;s self-deprecation, look it in the eye, and then come back to weigh its utility.
I had fun doing that over the course of this essay. But I&rsquo;m back now, and I want to spend this little paragraph letting you know how proud I am of you, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/film-tv/rachel-hilson-breakout-star-duster-hbo-max-interview-2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rachel</a>. Yes, you, a multi-hyphenate artist who puts together a mean herb bouquet; who enjoys the routine of a farmer&rsquo;s market even though you resent the inaccessibility of many of them; who makes an elaborate cup of tea every morning but never finishes it; who leaves the cabinets open much to the annoyance of your partner; who is a little more Scorpio than you let on (it&rsquo;s just passion!); who loves to sleep on a couch; who compulsively twerks all day at home and merely two-steps when out. Whoops, I got carried away. There were a few sticky moments where it felt like the train might stop, but you kept going, not without the support of your loved ones and your faith.
Thank you for taking care of this precious, precious body and nurturing that soul so consistent and sweet and patient with you. Here&rsquo;s to this new opportunity. Here&rsquo;s to thirty. There&rsquo;s more space in here.

There’s More Space In Here.

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