Many actresses feel discriminated against because of their age. Fed up with hearing the phrase "you're too old for the role", they have put themselves on the warpath
43-year-old actresses were discarded to play mothers of adolescents for being too old. Discarded to be the fictional couple of an actor who is 15, or 20 years older than them. James Bond aging gracefully while his on-screen love interests remain in their perfect twenties. Helen Mirren has described it as an "outrageous and ridiculous epidemic", with other less reproducible epithets, and almost no one gets rid of it: it is the covert discrimination suffered by those who live on their image after a certain age; and as usual, it affects women much more than men.
From Maggie Gyllenhaal to Jamie Denbo ('Orange is the new black'), many actresses have begun to denounce it in public, venting on Twitter when a casting call ends with that fearsome sentence: “Sorry, but you are too old for the part”. Not only in studio blockbusters. An independent film this year, without going any further, 'What Happened to Brad', presents a couple preparing for that usual rite of passage in the US, the passage of their son to university. He, Ben Stiller, is 52 years old. She, Jenna Fischer, is 44. How many similar marriages are we used to seeing on the big or small screen? It's just so common that no one cares.
Playing the wife of an older man is not, however, the worst thing that can happen to you if you are an actress and you are over forty. It is that 'cutting point', when, suddenly, “they don't know what to do with us”, Andie McDowell explained this weekend to a local Texas newspaper, 'My San Antonio'. “During my thirties, I could have worked as long as I wanted,” she admits. “But I had my children and I needed a break. Now, on the other hand, you reach an age where you can no longer be that perfect and innocent doll ”, complained McDowell, who has just entered her sixth decade. The actress who rose to fame with Lies and Videotape' has spent decades playing bit parts in little-known television series. This year she stars in 'Love after Love', an independent film, in which she shows herself in all her fullness as a mature but very well-preserved woman, including N- and maintaining her iconic curly dark hair.
Age discrimination seems almost inevitable in an industry that is based on image and ending it is a long-standing demand. A couple of years ago the fight to limit it made headlines when Gabrielle Carteris was named president of the actors union. Known for her role in the 1990s series "Sensation of Living," in which she played Andrea Zuckerman, the high school cutie's most "intellectual" classmate, Carteris made headlines when she got the California governor to pass AB 1687. , the so-called IMDB Law, to prohibit the most important database in the world of entertainment and others of the same style from showing the age of the actors if they so requested.
This law would not only help women (and men) over 40 to access more castings before being rejected outright because of their age; Carteris not showing her age allowed her to audition for the role that changed her life and her career: when she started working on 'Sensation of Living' she was 29 years old and the character of Andrea was 16. “If the casting directors had If they had known my age, they would never have let me do the tests”, he admitted. “Age discrimination is prohibited by law in any professional field, but in the case of actors, we are even more exposed with all the information about us that is just a click away. We want to give people the option not to reveal their age if they don't want to."
The law was short-lived. IMDB, which belongs to Amazon, denounced it as unconstitutional and the Californian courts stopped it in February 2017, considering that it violated the first amendment of the Constitution. But although the actors' union plans to appeal, assuring that this law would have a direct and immediate impact on the careers of hundreds of them, the truth is that the battle against age discrimination is beginning to change strategy. Perhaps resigned to the practical impossibility of keeping it hidden, many actresses no longer want to hide their age. They want to proclaim it to the four winds and continue getting work.
As with abuse and machismo, this is a much broader problem that is not particular to Hollywood. But in the same way that cinema is supposed to reflect reality, they are convinced that it also helps to transform it. “We are so used to seeing a 60-year-old man with a 40-year-old woman on screen,” McDowell argues in the same interview, “that it doesn't come as a surprise to us. And in the same way that having a younger partner somehow makes that man desirable. if we start seeing more couples where the woman is older than the man in fiction, we'll start finding women of 60 years as attractive and desirable as men.
Something seems to be leaking. In her acceptance speech after receiving the Screen Actors Guild Award for 'Big Little Lies', Nicole Kidman was pleased that things were changing. “To receive an award like this at this point in my life is something extraordinary. 20 years ago, at this point in my career, I would be pretty much forgotten." Nominated along with Susan Sarandon (71), Jessica Lange (68), Laura Dern (50), and Reese Witherspoon (41), Kidman, 50, continued: "We have shown and continue to show that we are powerful and 'viable' (sic ). I hope the industry will get behind us because we are telling our own stories. I applaud the directors, writers, and investors who put their passion and money into our projects." By the way, her partner in her fiction, Alexander Skarsgard, is 41 years old, nine years younger than her (the character too).
Judging by the winners of the union awards (and many other industry awards), 2018 has been an especially good year for actresses over 40, and not just for legends like Jessica Lange or Judie Dench (who doesn't seem to miss work); for perennial 'character' actresses like Allison Janney in supporting roles; or for glamorous superstars like Kidman. Frances McDormand won her second Oscar at age 60 for a leading role in "Three billboards outside", a film that also, with its female lead far removed from The 'perfect little doll', won awards in other categories. She's not only an actress going against the grain in the roles she chooses; McDormand cultivates a natural image totally removed from Hollywood glamour. Something that probably does much more for the cause of anti-ageism than appearing, like many others, ten years younger than they are. But everyone is free to age as they want and can.
“The ideal would be not to have to talk about it anymore. We all get old and that's it. I don't see the men of Hollywood having this debate”, protested Patricia Arquette in 'Elle' magazine a few months ago. The men of Hollywood may not have the debate in public, but they are surely just as concerned. Hence, they do not want their fictional partners to be interpreted as interesting mature women (that is, of their age) but rather as young, healthy women: it is their particular way of fighting against their own aging. Or, at least, against the public's (and casting directors') perception of how old they are.
