Charlize Theron knows her youthful looks won’t last forever — and frankly, she’s ok with it.

“I think, like many women, I [used to be] judgmental toward women as they aged,” the 39-year-old actress revealed in a new interview.

“Women, in our society, are compartmentalized so that we start to feel like we’re cut flowers and after a while we will wilt. I realize now that’s not the case — we can celebrate every age,” she continued.

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Charlize at age 17 in 1992.

“That’s my encouragement to 20-year-olds who are terrified of getting older: Don’t have a nervous breakdown and don’t hit the Chardonnay too hard. Getting older is not that bad.”

As for what advice she’d give herself at age 20? “I would say, ‘Calm down!'” said the mom of three-year-old Jackson.

Related: Charlize Theron on Boyfriend Sean Penn — ‘I Love the Possibility of Marriage’

“I was always in a rush. I felt like time was going to run out. Now that I’m older, I know I’m not missing out on anything. Now, I go home, and that feels really good. When I hit 30, I realized I didn’t have to please everybody. I could actually enjoy life, which is not a bad thing at all,” Charlize — who has been dating actor Sean Penn, 54, since early 2014 — told ‘W‘ magazine for their May issue, which hits newsstands April 28.

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Charlize on the cover of ‘W’ magazine’s May 2015 issue.