Hollywood royalty Andie MacDowell heads back to the silver screen this month with the premiere of the second season of "The Way Home."
The longtime actor stars as one of the leads in Hallmark's popular new family drama. The show follows three generations of Landry women who try to reconnect while uncovering their family's mysterious past.
Their secrets begin to unravel when the youngest Landry, Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow), accidentally discovers she can time-travel by falling into the pond near their family's estate. Alice's revelation pushes both her mother, Katherine (Chyler Leigh), and her grandmother, Del (MacDowell), headlong into their family's mysteries.
MacDowell plays their family's stubborn and willful matriarch who is determined to keep her family close and leave the past behind.
In real life, MacDowell has three children, with definitely fewer secrets and hardships between them than the Landry family has.
The Golden Globe-winning actress had all of her children — Justin, Rainey and Margaret — with her now-former husband Paul Qualley, a former model and rancher. Despite working consistently in Hollywood, MacDowell wanted to give her children a relatively normal life.
"My kids were always my priority and being a mother was the most important aspect of my life," she told Interview Magazine in 2021. "But I was competitive and I did want to work, so I was always balancing both of those aspects of my life."
She managed to grab some of her most famous roles — such as Rita in "Groundhog Day" (1993) and Carrie in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994) — while her children were still young. But despite becoming a movie star, MacDowell says being a mother was always her most important job.
"I am so extremely grateful for my three children and their father," she wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. "My children are the best part of my life. I am constantly learning from them, they are my greatest teachers. My job, my work is wonderful but my children are my life."
MacDowell's children are now fully grown, and two of them have even followed her into the entertainment business.
Here's what we know about Andie MacDowell's children.
Justin Qualley
Rachel Murray/Getty Images for National Women's History Museum
The oldest of MacDowell's children and her only son, Justin Qualley, is the only member of his family who has avoided the spotlight.
MacDowell got pregnant with Justin when she was a young model in New York and trying to break into the acting business. He was born on Aug. 14, 1986.
In a now-deleted Instagram post, MacDowell celebrated Justin's 35th weekend by calling him the greatest blessing of her life:
"I remember holding him in my arms and walking around the room looking at him and saying to myself 'I am a mother,'" she wrote. "Everything changed about who I was in that moment because I no longer cared about anything like I cared about him."
She went on to say that being a mother became a priority, but she still wanted a successful career. And she wasn't going to let either dream get in the way of the other.
"This was back in the days when we called this for women 'having it all,'" she wrote. "As if we were being greedy to want to be able to have a career and have children. I made it work and he was the magic I needed, the love that filled me up along with my other children to give me the courage to be all I could be."
These days, Justin lives in Montana, where he spent most of his childhood before his parents divorced. He works as a real estate agent, is married to Nicolette Qualley and recently made MacDowell a grandmother.
The "Groundhog Day" star said on the "Today" show in January 2023 that Cozette was born in late 2022 and they were able to spend the holidays together that year.
"I've never had somebody look into me and see my soul like that," she said about her granddaughter. "It was definitely a soul-to-soul connection."
Rainey Qualley
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
The middle Qualley sibling, Rainey, may have the most varied career of all her siblings.
Rainey was born on March 11, 1990, in Montana. She said that once her parents divorced, she had to adjust to the city life in North Carolina.
"That was a really idyllic place to grow up," she told Vanity Fair in 2014. "We didn't have TV or anything. It was kind of a culture shock moving to North Carolina. We had neighbors! We were just used to being wilderness children."
But despite her distance from the bright lights of stardom, Rainey knew she wanted to create a name for herself in the industry. She tried college but quit after two years and moved to New York to try to make it big.
Turns out that Rainey is something of a triple threat, finding success in modeling, singing and acting.
She made her acting debut in the 2012 dramedy film "Mighty Fine," which she starred in opposite her own mother.
"At first, I was a little apprehensive," she told Teen Vogue in 2012 about working with MacDowell. "Like all mothers, my mother has a tendency to be a bit overbearing and always give her two cents — but she gave me my space and allowed me to figure things out for myself."
That kick-started her on-screen career. She also nabbed a starring role in the indie romance "Falcon Song" (2014) and appeared in the sci-fi thriller "Perfect" (2018) as well as the 2018 women-led film "Ocean's 8."
However, she's also no stranger to television. The middle Qualley went viral for her small role in the last season of "Mad Men," donning a chinchilla fur coat next to Jon Hamm. Plus, she grabbed a lead role in the 2020 Freeform limited series "Love in the Time of Corona."
But Rainey told Autre in 2016 that she doesn't like to stay in one lane.
"I am the type of person who always has to be working on something or else I feel like I'm wasting time. So having multiple creative outlets keeps me from going crazy."
Under the stage name Rainsford, the middle sibling has dropped three EPs of music. Her first, 2015's Turn Down the Lights, was a country album. But she realized her heart was with a different genre.
"I got to open for Willie Nelson at the Ryman, I played the Grand Ole Opry multiple times — things I only ever dreamed of," she told Autre. "But ultimately, pop music is what I'm passionate about."
She has since released two other EPs: 2018's Emotional Support Animal and 2023's So that was my dream.
"Most of my songs are deeply personal, so they're about relationships or depression or whatever I'm going through at the moment," Rainey told the New York Post in 2018. "I've been having a lot of f——- up dreams, so I've been writing about that."
She also told Spin in 2022 that she was prepping for a debut album that has yet to drop.
"A lot of the music that I have put out so far has been very 'sad girl,'" she said. "I wrote a lot of songs in heartache and that felt really important — and it was at the time — but I want to write stuff that comes from a more joyful place. I'm also just happier now."
Outside of her creative pursuits, Rainey is also an activist, mostly advocating for animals. She has frequently spoken out against SeaWorld and the harm its operations cause to marine animals. Apart from owning her own dog and cat, the triple threat also fosters stray kittens and regularly promotes animal shelters on social media.
Margaret Qualley
Michael Kovac/Getty Images for AFI
Margaret is the youngest Qualley sibling, but she's also the most well-known. However, she says she never planned to be famous as a child.
She told Harper's Bazaar that she was a "goofy kid" and that she didn't have aspirations to be an actress. But, like any typical younger sibling, Margaret said she "dreamed that one day I would be like my older sister."
Growing up in Asheville, North Carolina, Margaret told the Evening Standard that her movie star mother was definitely an enigma as the only Hollywood actress there.
"I grew up always being like, 'Well, it's just normal to me, she's my mom, so it's my normal life,'" she said. "But also I knew it was weird. I did go to a normal school, [had] normal friends, and had a somewhat normal life. Then my mom would go off and do movies and sometimes I'd go with her and I'd meet, like, Gérard Depardieu."
Growing up around so much creativity, it made sense that Margaret followed the same path. She moved to New York City at 16 to study at the American Ballet Theatre.
However, her career as a dancer was cut short when she realized that career wasn't for her. (Her background helped tremendously, though, when she was cast in the 2019 miniseries "Fosse/Verdon" as a dancer, which earned her an Emmy nod.)
Margaret then tried her hand at modeling. Despite walking in New York Fashion Week at 16 and working for fashion houses such as Chanel and Ralph Lauren, she decided modeling wasn't it either.
Finally, she found her passion when she started taking acting classes with her boyfriend at the time. She scored her first role in the thriller "Palo Alto" (2013).
That first credit opened doors for her, and she soon grabbed one of the leads in three seasons of HBO's drama series "The Leftovers."
Margaret made the leap to film with her feature debut in the action comedy "Nice Guys" (2016) alongside Ryan Gosling. She told Vs Magazine that when she arrived for the audition, the casting crew told her Gosling was going to be in the room.
"I was just so flustered; I don't know where I'm going, or what I'm doing," she said. "I stalled for about an hour, telling stories about my dad surfing and his caveman tendencies and did everything to avoid having to audition. Thankfully, they put me out of my misery and told me I got the job on the spot."
Since then, the youngest Qualley has also grabbed roles in the horror mystery film "Death Note" (2017), acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino's comedy-Western "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" (2019) and the thriller-comedy "My Salinger Year" (2020).
But the role that put Margaret on the map was starring in Netflix's limited series "Maid." Based on Stephanie Land's memoir, "Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive," the story follows 25-year-old Alex as she tries to remove herself and her daughter from an abusive relationship while trying to stay afloat.
Margaret actually convinced production to cast her own mother, MacDowell, as her character's mother in the series.
"That's a really special thing to happen to a parent, to have a child trust them and to want them to play opposite them," MacDowell told NPR in 2021.
Margaret said she appreciated being able to act alongside her mother because it made the scenes more intimate.
"When you walk into a room and your mom is there, that does something to you," she said to Harpers Bazaar. "Not only do you have permission to touch her like family, but rolling your eyes is a built-in response in the same way that tearing up from a well-timed hug is."
Though it was one of her first times leading a call sheet, Margaret earned an Emmy nomination for the role.
Outside of her career, Margaret married Bleachers frontman and frequent Taylor Swift collaborator Jack Antonoff in August 2023.
"I am so happy that I found my person," she told Harpers Bazaar. "And it's real. It's amazing. It's the best feeling in the world. I'm so excited and so at ease all at once."
