From the role of Louise in the groundbreaking movie Thelma and Louise to Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking, stunning Susan Sarandon makes one of the most beloved Hollywood actors.

Besides having an incredible career which spans many years, Susan is also using her fame to promote body positivity and self-acceptance as two essential elements which lead to overall well-being.

Over the years, Susan has experienced certain health issues which stood on her way to become a mother at younger age. Being diagnosed with endometriosis, an often painful disorder in which tissue similar to the tissue that normally lines the inside of the uterus — the endometrium — grows outside the uterus. Besides being painful, this condition often prevents women who suffer from it to conceive. Sadly, this was the case with Susan, who struggled to get pregnant for many years.

When she shared the news that she was expecting her first child at the age of 39, many were surprised with her “unusual” decision to start her “mommy career” “so late” in life.

Susan, who received an Oscar nomination for Atlantic City in 1980, gave birth to her first child, daughter Eva Amurri, in 1985.

In 1988, after her marriage to Amurri came to an end, she began dating Tim Robbins, an actor who was 12 years her junior. She and Tom welcomed two children together, sons John “Jack” Henry (born in 1989) and Miles Robbins (born in 1992).

“I had my first baby at 39 and my third at 45, and with each child, [people were] like, ’Are you crazy? Don’t!’” Susan once revealed in an interview.

Besides the struggles, Susan never doubted that she would become a mother one day. “It’s not okay to miss out on a part of life because of pain and excessive bleeding,” she said in 2011 at an Endometriosis Foundation of America event.

Today, not only she is a mom of three, but she’s also a grandma of three sweet grandchildren from her daughter.

Susan stands for strength and confidence and yet she is sometimes a target of critics who don’t like the way she dresses. One of them is Piers Morgan who widely chastised her for her outfit on Twitter in 2016. He especially criticized her for her white suit jacket, which could be undone to show cleavage and a black bra.

“Would Susan Sarandon wear this to a funeral? No. It was thus horribly inappropriate for an In Memoriam tribute,” Morgan tweeted.

In another tweet, he added, “To clarify, I’ve no problem with Susan Sarandon flashing her breasts. Just tacky to do it when fronting ‘In Memoriam’ at awards show.”

Some Tweeter users who agreed with him went so far that they called Susan “unattractive” and a “wretched, old, dried up, nasty nobody.”

She then decided to speak up for herself and her style. ”While I may not be fully versed in every aspect of fashion, I am aware of what personally appeals to me and what captures my interest, which I choose to embrace. I don’t feel the need to constantly conform to popular trends,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2019.

Also, she posted an old photo of herself in her underwear, proudly displaying her figure. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, and Sarandon shut up anyone who was questioning what was ‘appropriate’ for her and what wasn’t.

Susan is not at all concerned when it comes to aging. In an interview, she said, “When your sense of time has an ending and isn’t finite, like how it feels when you’re young.” She added, “When you have an understanding that time is precious—you have a tendency not to waste energy on the small stuff and only to surround yourself with people who are vital, curious, brave, and adventurous.”

The truth is that Susan Sarandon is approaching her eighties and she still looks as fabulous as ever.