Should Hollywood Keep Aging Actresses?

The problem with this thesis is that in several of these roles the characters don't start out old. Sally Field was actually older than her character when Forrest Gump begins. The same is true of Elizabeth Taylor in Giant and Angelina Jolie in Alexander. Both actress played roles where there characters started out close to the actresses' real age and then grew older. Lea Thompson played the mother with prosthetics to look older in the beginning of Back to the Future more for the continuity of having the same actress in the role rather than for any nefarious ageism reason.

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It's different when there are multiple time periods in a movie.

eg: Carla Gugino and Malin Ackerman are probably relatively close in age, but who cares?

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Not that I disagree with your main argument, but I don't think it was fair to include Lea Thompson as an example of younger actresses playing older characters, or actresses being younger than their male counterparts in films. A time travel story is a unique situation. Lea Thompson was about 24 when "Back To The Future" was made, but spent far more time playing a teen character than she did playing a middle-aged one.

On a separate note, more egregious examples of age differences can be found when comparing actors and actresses who are supposed to be love interests instead of mother and son. Clint Eastwood is about 24 years older than Rene Russo ("In The Line of Fire") and Harrison Ford is considerably older (as much as 27 years from what I could find) than most of the women who started as his love interest in his films.

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Rachel Griffiths is a year younger than Johnny Depp... but she played his mother in "Blow."

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An odd article. It takes an age old argument (no pun intended) and somehow manages to do a poor job of presenting it. The issues with Thompson and Field have been noted and the writer left out that, in "Giant", Carroll Baker played Liz Taylor's daughter even though she was a year older than Liz.

I think in many cases, the issue is that the older stars need (or want) a younger actor to age them down. Clint Eastwood was too old for the role in "In The Line of Fire" but put him with a younger woman and the audience might not notice. Jodie Foster quit "The Game" because she (35 at the time) wanted to play Michael Douglas's daughter and not his sister. She was replaced by 37 year old Sean Penn, who played the brother.

I wonder what Depp movie this happened on? The Rum Diary is in pre-production but that doesn't seem to fit.

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Should Hollywood keep aging MALE actors?
By the way, Sally Field played Tom Hanks' love interest in the 80s movie "Punchline". In that movie, her character was about ten years older than his character.

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This is slightly off topic, but why does Hollywood keep putting men in their 30s in roles of teenagers? (Especially when the actors in question do NOT appear to have the freakish "Dick Clark gene" that prevents aging)

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How was Clint Eastwood too old for In the Line of Fire? He was supposed to be that old. Maybe a few years younger, but we really are quibbling about age if we start arguing about characters needing to be 58 instead of 63.

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It makes sense with some casting choices: Sally Field played mother to a young boy before she played mother to Tom Hanks. You don't start out with an older actress to play a child's mother, you start with a young actress and then age her as her "child" ages. That's only common sense.

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I vote to exclude actresses and actors who simply sour the entertainment world because they can't act. ie; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Will Hollywood please stop casting these deadbeats in what could be a good movie AND cast a genuine talented person. Those two are has beens, they might have been cute in the earlier years but now they are disgusting and embarassing themselves! GO RAISE ALL THOSE BOUGHT KIDS AND STOP USING THEM AS PUBLICITY STUNTS!

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I’d like seeing more "actual older women" on screen; here’s why. Ageing, though not pretty, is a serious reality of life, not something to skip, overlook, or eliminate. From the proper perspective ageing can be funny. Life itself is somewhat like a bell curve. All humans are born ugly; they then transform into their most (late teens to 30) attractive; and are over the top of the bell curve and on their way to the bottom again by the age of 30. Most of human life is lived in an aged (over 30) state. Movies should sometimes touch on real life. I think denying the realities of ageing is more at issue than ageism is?
I agree with the other posts: Freeman seems to present a poor theory using inappropriate examples.

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Obviously age should have little to do with casting somone in a movie, and focus on casting talent. Yes some of us dislike the idea of the 55 year old man with a 35 year old love intrest in a movie. And yes we rarely see the reverse. Your saying why cast Keria Knightly when you can cast Helen Mirrian? Why cast Anne Hathaway when you can have Diane Keeton? Maybe if casting directors cast based on the talent they will provide the role rather then the physical beauty that they posess, you'd see more older actors getting meatier roles then just playing mother. How old was Audrey Hepburn when she did "Wait Until Dark"? and that was a great performance.

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Though I think some of these examples are not ideal to illustrate this point I think it self evident that Hollywood is generally opposed to representing older women in a positive and alluring way, and in fact abhorrent to genuine representations of aging women as desirable. There are a number of shows (TV particularly) that feature middle-age men who would be described as "character" actors in main or leading roles and are paired with significantly younger and highly attractive women yet is practically unheard of to have a show featuring a middle age women is a similar position. In recent years as many established actors have aged it seems there has been an embracing of the "rugged" look of aging male stars but no reciprocation for females. Despite some current change the entertainment industry remains in MANY ways a boys club but it is more than that. As a culture we have allowed media to dictate the standards of beauty- perhaps it is time to assess what the actual qualities of beauty mean to us and how that differs from the main stream media. Comments such as "aging isn't pretty" relate directly to this. Media could play a role in MAKING more realistic representations of aging and realistic body type beautiful by treating them as such instead of continually pushing the idealized illusions that are so prevalent in the industry today.

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How 'bout Glenn Close playing Robin Williams' mother in The World According to Garp?! She was only three years older than him and 33 at the time!

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The French know how to keep using older, sexy actresses. Think Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling, Isabelle Adjani or Nathalie Baye. All still working and looking great!

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