Christine Baranski Describes Her Vision Loss

Todd Hartley:
Hi, and thank you for joining us at EmpowHER where we improve health and change lives. Over 50 million Americans, as they have aged, have experienced vision loss when reading up close. Now have you ever wondered how that vision loss happens? Well it occurs when the eye’s natural crystalline lens, it becomes less elastic causing blurred vision when reading small print.

To share her story and discuss the eye health campaign that she is involved with, with Bausch & Lomb, I’m joined right now by actress Christine Baranski from “Mamma Mia,” who recently wrapped filming the latest episodes of “The Good Wife.” Hi Christine!

Christine Baranski:
Hello.

Todd Hartley:
Well it’s nice to have you here and I know that in our audience, women over 40, vision loss when reading up close is a huge subject. Patients typically know they are experiencing change in their vision some time in their 40s. When did it happen for you?

Christine Baranski:
Well I had actually begun wearing glasses to be able to see far away by my late 20s or early 30s just to help out of a bit. I didn’t have bad vision, but I needed a little help, but sure enough, I would say by my late 30s I really started to feel like it was helpful also to read, to get help with reading.

Then when I hit my mid 40s certainly I definitely needed help, and then of course you get into your 50s and it becomes clear that no matter where you put that bottle of Aspirin to read them, read the directions you can’t find a place.

Todd Hartley:
You can’t possibly put a far enough way.

Christine Baranski:
You are near or far where you can see the fine prints. So I actually for years wore bifocals, and I grappled with, in terms of my career, having to either see a monitor far away, you know, say at an awards show I’m in a beautiful gown and I have got the jewelry and everything is perfect, I’d still have to put glasses on to see the monitor in order to read off of it, or if I was making a speech I would have to use my reading glasses. I’d either have to use the bifocals to read with, to look down and see the page.

Todd Hartley:
There’s nothing sexy about bifocals, right?

Christine Baranski:
Well, it is what it is, you know, I always thought Sophia Loren, she always puts on those glorious gowns and when she wears those glasses I don’t know she… I always thought glasses kind of made you also look kind of, you know, sophisticated and intelligent and I certainly use glasses on “The Good Wife” for that effect because they are also a wonderful prop, they are old…

Todd Hartley:
Yeah, they are.

Christine Baranski:
But in real life I got so tired, first of all with having to deal with putting on glasses, you know, to go to the opera, whatever. In my professional and glamour life I call it, but also just in my practical life. You know, I had to have glasses, bifocals and then I had to have prescription sunglasses because now-a-days we all wear sunglasses outdoors, and I don’t know, it just seems to be an accessory for most people, but especially well-known people like to go down the street; you feel a little protected with your glasses on.

Todd Hartley:
Right, right.

Christine Baranski:
So what would happen is I would have two pairs of glasses in my handbag or wherever and it was always, I was always wrestling. I was always wrestling to find them in my bag or if I lost them it was extremely costly to replace, not only the frame, but the prescription. God forbid you actually forget, you know you go somewhere and actually forget your pair of glasses and you hope you have your backup pair somewhere, but I found it just became a huge pain and when I was approached by Bausch & Lomb for this I thought, “Well this is a terrific idea because a multifocal lens,” you know, people fear bifocals because it’s either near or far and they have trouble getting used to that thing that happens where you just have to get used to it or certain contact lenses for near and far, you know, bifocal effect, you put a near lens in one eye and a far lens in the other eye.

The multifocals are just a kind of new products that allows you to see at any distance, and I have worn them and they are pretty fabulous and of course they are so liberating because you don’t have to deal with… you can have your sunglasses if you want them, you know, your regular preference, but if you lose them it’s not, it doesn’t involve a prescription and it just makes your life easier. You don’t walk around the house wondering, “Where did I put my glasses?”

Todd Hartley:
Sure. I am a glasses wearer so I totally understand what you are saying. You are talking about Bausch & Lomb’s multifocal contact lens. How has that changed your career?

Christine Baranski:
Oh well, you know, I mean I honestly would just pop them in and now I can walk around and then I can read or I can see far away and I can, you know, function and I can also just look the way I look with you know, when I get my hair and makeup done and everything looks nice and I’m not forced to stick on a pair of glasses.

As you know the glasses, you know, they make a mark on your nose and they have what they are. Anyone who’s worn glasses will understand what I am saying that and it becomes so much a part of our life that when I get to go without it, It was just so, oh my god, almost disorienting because it was like, “Oh my god, I can actually like…” it’s like having two hands liberated, you know, you feel free.

Todd Hartley:
Yeah, you know, my family has always been going to Broadway plays. That’s one of the things we’ve done as a family, as a big group altogether and we saw “Mamma Mia” several times before we saw it on the big screen and that movie was so good. It was hard to imagine anything being as good as the play was. That movie was exceptional. Where did you guys film that?

Christine Baranski:
Oh listen, we filmed it on a sound stage in London; on the 007 sound stage, but then we went for five weeks to Greece and we shot on two different islands and they were absolutely beautiful.

Todd Hartley:
Oh god, I love…I just got chills thinking about my time in Greece. What islands were you on?

Christine Baranski:
Skopelos and Skiathos and they are not your typical islands down south of Athens. They are actually in the north.

Todd Hartley:
Okay.

Christine Baranski:
And, you know, like Hydra is south of Athens and then Mykonos, all southern islands. These were a little further removed, up north and not as heavily populated, although we waited until late summer, early fall to film so we weren’t there smack in the middle of the heat and the tourist season.

Todd Hartley:
I swear it looked like you guys had the best time making that movie ever.

Christine Baranski:
Well we did, you know, the bottom line is, and I thought the way to make this movie work, Meryl and I both agreed is to like have fun and look like we were having fun because it communicates, you know? And it wasn’t that hard to have fun because we were with a great group of people, the men were fabulous and Julie and Meryl and I hit it off and we just, it was like a paid vacation for us – it really was.

Todd Hartley:
I got to tell you, when we were in the theater watching it during one of the dance scenes, my wife asked me if we could get up and dance.

Christine Baranski:
It’s nice to have done a project that just gives such unabashed joy to people that they watch it again and again, and every time they watch it they just give themselves over to that kind of joy. I mean it’s a movie about coming together and having a wedding and when I took my daughter to the premiere in London, both my daughters sat next to me, and when it was over my daughter Lilly turned to me and said, “Oh I don’t want it to be over. I want to live in that world.”

Todd Hartley:
Oh that’s so beautiful.

Christine Baranski:
And she meant a world where everybody was sitting around singing and drinking wine and feeling happy and, you know, it was just so much fun.

Todd Hartley:
I want to get an invite to that world too. Listen, I know you are here to talk about Bausch & Lomb and there’s a contest going on, it’s called ‘Goodbye Readers, Hello Hollywood’ contest. Tell me about what you and Bausch & Lomb are up to and also if you have got a story about something funny or outrageous that happened wearing reading glasses I’d love to hear it.

Christine Baranski:
Oh well, this is exactly what the contest encourages people to share their funny experiences with reading glasses, and if you go to this website, goodbyereaders.com, with a submission, a panel of judges will decide whose story is the best or the funniest or the most appropriate for the campaign and you will be flown to Hollywood and get a kind of makeover and have some fun all expenses paid, and the contest is between March 26th and May 28th. So you have until the 28th of May now.

And there’s two winning entries and the grand prize winners will receive a kind of star treatment and round trip airfreight to Los Angeles with accommodations, and you may be featured in a video for Bausch & Lomb multifocal lenses.

Now I guess my funniest story is one that I think so many people have, which is looking for a half an hour for my glasses everywhere, everywhere, everywhere and where were they? On my head.

Todd Hartley:
Of course, of course.

Christine Baranski:
I think that’s something everybody can relate to, or finding them under the bed of course.

Todd Hartley:
Wait a second, how about finding them on your nose? I have done that several times where I am looking for my glasses…

Christine Baranski:
You mean where you literally are wearing them and you didn’t realize?

Todd Hartley:
Oh yeah, I mean, but if you knew me it would just be, you’d go, “Oh that totally makes sense Todd.”

Christine Baranski:
You know, I think I have actually done that once and they become such a part of your life that you no longer feel them. No I know, it’s something that, I mean modern technology is so extraordinary, what they are doing now with, you know, laser surgery to correct all kinds of things and I mean these lenses are so… I tried lenses years ago and they were so thick and so difficult on my eyes, but these are just these tiny little whisper of a saucer that you pop in and out, and as I said, they’re just completely liberating and women, you know, women and men want to stay feeling, they want to feel young and want to bring out the best in the way they look and a big old clunky pair of glasses is, I mean yeah, you can get cool glasses, there’s no question about it, but that’s always an option. You can have your cool glasses and wear them on occasion, but we are talking about being a slave to glasses and in my case, two pairs of glasses.

I was at the opera early this year and I had just bought a pair of very chic, very beautiful designer frames and I had my bifocal lens put in to these sunglasses. I don’t know what, I must have walked into the opera wearing sunglasses, somehow put them somewhere; they were gone. It was just, and I had just got them a month earlier and they were gone. It was so, well it just seemed like such a waste, such a tremendous waste of money, you know, knowing I’d have to… I didn’t even bother to replacing them and I thought, “Well I’m never buy expensive frames again because if you lose it you just out so much money, you know?”

Todd Hartley:
For those of you who’d like to get involved in the contest, go to goodbyereaders.com. She is Christine Baranski from “The Good Wife” and for “Mamma Mia.” She just stole the show in that movie and made us laugh every time we saw her on screen. She wears the multifocal contact lenses from Bausch & Lomb, and if you’d like to get involved in the ‘Goodbye Readers Hello Hollywood’ contest go to goodbyereaders.com.

Christine, thank you so much for helping us advocate for women.

Christine Baranski:
Thank you so much Todd, bye-bye.

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