Julie Bowen Opens Up About Dry Eye Disease

Julie Bowen has been hard at work, focusing on filming a new horror series, “Hysteria!” The actor plays Linda Campbell, a Midwest mom who begins to experience paranormal disturbances during the Satanic panic of the 1980s. The role required an intense level of “heightened emotions” as Bowen’s character unravels and her fears take over, she tells PS. In other words, the role calls for some on-demand tears — something Bowen says was getting harder and harder for her to produce on camera.

While filming, Bowen noticed her contacts were drier than usual, exacerbated by the artificial atmosphere being pumped into the set. “On ‘Hysteria!’ it was like two hours and I’d be on a rig swinging, popping [my contacts] out,” she says. “The director used to catch them in his hands. It became a bit.”

Eventually, she scheduled an appointment with her eye doctor and was diagnosed with dry eye disease, a condition caused by “inadequate tear production, altered composition of the tear components, or both,” Danielle Orr, OD, chief of the Advanced Ocular Care clinic at The Ohio State University College of Optometry, previously told PS.

Bowen didn’t take the diagnosis seriously at first, thinking she could grab a regular over-the-counter eye drop as a solution. That didn’t help. “[OTC eye drops] are great for 20 minutes, good for a quickie, but it’s not a long-term solution and I don’t want quickies,” Bowen says — especially not with the level of discomfort she was experiencing. Now, she uses a prescription eye drop twice a day.

With her eye health under better control, Bowen’s found more time to focus on the other things that matter to her, like fitness and new hobbies like pickleball and mahjong. Both have become third places for the actor. “I play mahjong with some ladies once a week and it’s really challenging,” Bowen says. “But it’s dope. I’m into it, and more than that, it’s the ritual of seeing the same people once a week. It matters.”

It’s also been part of what keeps her grounded in an industry that can be particularly tough on aging women. “Hollywood’s the worst because you got all these people who have antiaging digital technology in their contracts . . . and that becomes the standard for what you’re supposed to look like,” Bowen says. But whenever she goes home and hangs out with her pickleball and mahjong crews, it’s a much-needed reality check. “I’ll go home, or you’re out in the real world, and you see people your own age and go, ‘That’s what real humans look like.'”

There are also a few actors in Hollywood she looks to for inspiration, like Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, and Jamie Lee Curtis. “Those women are the bomb, and they have fearlessly done the unthinkable and allowed themselves to age and allowed us to see what their faces look like,” Bowen says.

Even still, she has her off days, struggling to keep negative self-talk at bay or process the emotional aspects of the job. For that, she relies on therapy. “Therapy is great at helping me prioritize and helping me realize what is real and what is noise in my head,” Bowen says, adding that her sons — Oliver, John, and Gustave — also help her find balance between the two. “They demand reality from me,” Bowen says.

They still need to find their basketball shorts for practice, after all — no matter what’s going on in her head.

Alexis Jones is the senior health and fitness editor at PS. Her passions and areas of expertise include women’s health and fitness, mental health, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and chronic conditions. Prior to joining PS, she was the senior editor at Health magazine. Her other bylines can be found at Women’s Health, Prevention, Marie Claire, and more.