Kate Mara: 'I'm not afraid of ageing'

Kate Mara is not concerned about ageing in Hollywood because she was never raised to worry about her looks.

The House of Cards star can't understand why so many people in Hollywood put such an emphasis on youth and lie about their age, while appearing older is viewed as negative, because the women in her family never talked about getting old when she was growing up.

"I wasn't brought up to be concerned with that," she tells Refinery29.com. "My mom never made a big deal about getting older. She still doesn't. And my grandma never did. I have a huge family, and the women in my family have never put a great deal of energy into that in a negative way.

"So even though I'm in this industry, where that is a huge part of the discussion, and ageing is seen as a negative, ageing, to me, so far, hasn't been a scary thing. I do find it interesting that people never lie about their age in the opposite way. They never say they're older than they are. It's always the opposite."

Kate insists she is actually looking forward to growing older because with age comes new experiences. She believes her peers' views on ageing have a lot to do with fear - something she wants to keep out of her life, because she feels it will negatively affect her career.

"I get excited about getting older because the women that I look up to typically are much older than me and doing much more interesting things than I'm doing," she continues. "I know younger women that are amazing as well.

"To me, it's just something that I look forward to. But I do think a lot of that has to do with my upbringing, so I know I'm lucky in that sense. I also just try not to focus on it, because it's just fear. And I don't know when fear really helps anybody succeed.

The 33-year-old also has no qualms or grumbles about being a woman in Hollywood - while many actresses, including Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain, have spoken out about equal pay issues in the movie industry, Kate admits the issue is not something she has had to deal with.

"I don't really have anything necessarily that I could share specific to that," she says. "I'm aware of all these things that have happened to other actresses, and they are certainly not OK, and the unequal pay thing is wrong. I'm sure little things have happened to me that I just can't think of right now or that I was not made aware of."