HAPPY GILMORE 2 Star Margaret Qualley is COSMOPOLITAN’s 60th Anniversary Issue Cover Star!

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At just 30 years old, Margaret Qualley has more than a fair share of critically acclaimed roles under her belt. And this year, she stars in four major films: HAPPY GILMORE 2, HONEY DON’T!, BLUE MOON, and HUNTINGTON. But, despite her ever-growing career, it wasn’t until recently that she started to step into who she really is.

Following in the footsteps of her mother Andie MacDowell—who was featured on the cover of COSMOPOLITAN’s September 1982 issue—Margaret is featured on the Fall 2025 issue cover, opening up to COSMOPOLITAN editor-in-chief Willa Bennett about everything a Cosmo girl should know: the complexities of womanhood, what it feels like to meet the love of your life, her best sex advice, her upcoming films, bonding with her costars, and more. 

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On how her career started: “I moved to New York City at 16, when I got into a summer program at the American Ballet Theatre. Although I didn’t watch Dance Moms, that was very much the world I grew up in. But I realized I was just not good enough to be a dancer, and I’ll never be perfect at it. And if I’m not going to be the best, I don’t think it’s worth pursuing. I got a modeling job and was able to pay my rent. And I was like, ‘I could just stay here.’ I sent my mom a long email: ‘Found a school. Got a job. What do you think?’”

 On living alone in New York as a teenager: “I was 16 years old, alone in the city. It felt terrifying. Other kids were going home to their parents and their tutors, and I was at Paris Fashion Week with a chemistry or algebra textbook for a class that I was failing. I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know anyone in the city. If a guy got on the elevator, I would get off. I lived all of my 20s out of a suitcase, without any furniture. I had a mattress on the floor. And I became financially independent by the time I was 18, so I was super frugal, too.”

On falling in love with her husband, Jack Antonoff: “Falling in love with Jack was the biggest feeling I’ve ever felt. We met right as COVID was ending, at the first party I’d been to. We saw each other on a roof, and we just started talking and never stopped. We went on a series of walks throughout the city that summer.”

On her mother Andie MacDowell’s September 1982 cover of Cosmopolitan: “It’s iconic—she looks amazing. Ever since I was young, Cosmo has been the only magazine I’ve avidly read. I was this gangly thing that so badly wanted to be one of the girls with the spray tan and the blonde hair who played field hockey. I manifested this Cosmo cover.”

On what she learned reading Cosmo while she was growing up: “I remember being on a plane with my sister, Rainey, and we’d gotten our hands on a Cosmo. We immediately flipped to the questionnaire, then to the sex-stories-gone-wrong and read the most salacious bits. I was reading this way before I’d had sex. I was a late bloomer. I grew up in the South, and Cosmo was helpful in that it removed shame from sex. I realized that there’s a world in which you can have fun and maybe not be so embarrassed about it all.”

On her mental health: “I’m just getting to the place where I feel like I can stay in my own body instead of shape-shifting to be whatever whoever wants. But I’m still very consistently trying to strengthen my own point of view and feel myself on my feet and in my shoes. The biggest thing I’ve learned is that the sooner you allow yourself to feel whatever you’re feeling, the better. What I know for certain is that I’m happier than I’ve ever been, by leaps and bounds. I know myself better, and I can enjoy my life.”

 On how meditation has helped her step into who she really is: “I meditate every day, twice a day, and I feel very in touch with the same person that I was when I was 4 or 9, you know? But as a woman, I feel like, ‘How much of this is me?’ Like 98 percent is what the world puts on you—it’s everyone else’s baggage.”

On what playing Sue in The Substance taught her about womanhood and her close friendship with costar Demi Moore:  “The Substance was like entering the eye of the storm. It was like dealing with all of my sh*t, my mom’s sh*t, generations of trauma. It was a nightmare, being this idyllic, youthful fembot. No one thinks of themselves like that. The movie is not a good touchstone for what femininity is—it is quite masculine in a lot of ways. The thing I’ll take home with me, for sure, is Demi Moore. She’s such a special person. She’s strong and she’s wise, but she’s also incredibly soft and porous….I learned so much from her. She’s become one of my dearest friends.”

On how she got into character for her role as a queer detective in Honey Don’t!:“I trust any girl to be able to solve a f*cking murder mystery with Instagram, to be honest. But my character is very confident and talkative. She’s not a woman of few words. I think that sometimes I’ve made myself comfortable by knocking myself down. She’s the opposite of that. She’s in her power and smart and sexy. She’s a bit like a cool-guy player. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I made my physicality kind of like Matty Healy. I tried to do it like Matty Healy would do it. I got to feel what it would be like to be a guy hitting on a girl.”

On putting down our devices and living in the moment: “Cell phones are like cigarettes. I’m a big fan of airplane mode. Because opening your phone is also like going to work, you know? I don’t have any apps on my phone except Uber, texting, and Maps. And that’s nice, because then it’s like if I’m at the grocery store, I don’t just pull out my phone. I’m just there, listening to people’s conversations. And I feel more immersed in my life. I have another phone at home that doesn’t have cell phone service—it just has Wi-Fi, and I can look at Instagram. We are all definitely too plugged in.”

COSMOPOLITAN’s Fall 2025 Issue celebrating 60 years of love and legacy hits newsstands nationwide on August 12.

[Photo Credit: Alana O’Herlihy for Cosmopolitan Magazine]

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