For decades, the age of 40 was the point of no return for the
majority of Hollywood’s leading ladies of film. But there’s been a
seismic shift in the way the industry and moviegoers view “aging” top
actresses, and today their clout and box-office muscle have never been
greater.
Forty-nine-year-old Sandra Bullock is getting a ton of attention for
her starring role in the space epic “Gravity,” but this was already a
great year overall for actresses over 40. Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer
Aniston and Melissa McCarthy all starred in breakout box-office hits.
And there are more high-profile movies with women over 40 in plum
roles still to come. Emma Thompson will star opposite Tom Hanks in the
Mary Poppins tale “Saving Mr. Banks,” due on Dec. 13. And later that
month, 64-year-old Meryl Streep – who’s been an exception to the rule
for some time – will be featured with Julia Roberts, who turns 46 on
Monday, in the drama “August: Osage County.”
Their success has been artistic as well as commercial.
The five top contenders for the Best Actress Oscar, according to the
GoldDerby.com
experts, are Bullock, Streep, Thompson (54), Cate Blanchett (44) and
Judi Dench (78). If those end up being the five nominees, the average
age in the category will be almost 58.
There are a lot of reasons things have changed. Here are six:
The Box Office
Nothing breaks down barriers like a healthy bottom line and over-40 actresses have delivered this year.
Bullock and McCarthy were cop buddies in 2013’s biggest comedy “The
Heat,” which has taken in $228 million worldwide. Jennifer Aniston drove
the summer’s surprise hit “We’re the Millers.” And the popularity of
57-year-old Oprah Winfrey had a great deal to do with the success of
“Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” an Oscar contender that has already served up
$130 million worldwide.
Their success has crossed genres, too. Vera Farmiga starred in the
year’s biggest horror hit, “The Conjuring,” and Halle Berry topped the
box office with the dark thriller “The Call” in March.
Even Gwyneth Paltrow, who played Tony Stark’s gal pal in the year’s highest-grossing movie, Marvel’s “Iron Man 3,” is 41.
Audiences Are Getting Older
A lot of the people who saw Oprah in “The Butler” also saw her
in “The Color Purple” back in 1985. The same goes for “Gravity” viewers,
who recalled Bullock in 1994’s “Speed.” That gives moviegoers a sense
of connection, as with long-time friends.
“The Baby Boomer generation has been going to the movies all of their
lives and they’ve never stopped,” said Catherine Paura, chairman and
chief executive of
Capstone Global Marketing and Research.
“They want to see narrative-driven movies, with strong stories that
they can relate to. They’re in the habit of going to the movies, and
they like them, especially when their stars are in them.”
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More than a third of all movie tickets purchased in the U.S. last
year were by people past 40, so these actresses don’t seem old to them
at all. And Baby Boomers now represent 28 percent of the populace, so
the trend is here to stay.
They’re Getting Better with Age
People watched Julia Louis-Dreyfus yuck it up on TV’s
“Seinfeld” back when they were in their 20s and 30s and she was, too.
But anyone’s who’s seen her nuanced portrayal of a discombobulated
single mother taking a tentative step toward romance in “Enough Said,”
has to be impressed with how far she’s come since her Elaine days.
“You look at people like her or Sandra Bullock and people say they’re hitting their stride as actresses,” said casting director
Marci Liroff,
who specializes in feature films and TV, “but they couldn’t have
excelled in these roles without the career and life experience that they
developed when they were younger. And I loved Elaine.”
Hollywood Is Wising Up
A decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine a film like
this year’s “Blue Jasmine” making $30 million. But the Woody Allen
joint in which Blanchett plays a middle-aged woman struggling to find
her footing after her swindling husband is jailed has done just that.
While roles designed specifically for women of that age group remain
the exception, Hollywood is making more movies that appeal to older
audiences of late.
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“The studios are seeing there’s an audience out there and saying
let’s make something for them to see,” said Paura. “Look at last
Christmas, when you had ‘Les Miserables,’ ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Argo’ all out
there at the same time, all doing great business. It’s a realization
that this is an under-served and very viable audience.”
Where progress is most apparent is with movies like “The Heat” or
“Gravity,” in which the protagonists almost certainly would have been
male a decade ago. And “The Heat” showed that women can be as
foul-mouthed, obnoxious – and funny – as men.
Young Actresses Aren’t Translating
Other than Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway, there aren’t
many actresses under 40 who can sell tickets overseas, an increasingly
critical component when movies are developed and cast today.
That’s not necessarily a gender issue – there aren’t many young men
who can, either. But Roberts, Streep, Bullock, Angelina Jolie and
Cameron Diaz can – while Scarlett Johansson, Emma Stone and Amanda
Seyfried generally don’t. But that’s nothing time won’t cure, according
to casting director Liroff.
“These young women are at exactly the stage the legends we’re talking about were back then,” she said.
We Saw It on TV
“When you see a Robin Wright on ‘House of Cards’ or Jessica
Lange on ‘American Horror Story,’ I think people and – and Hollywood —
take notice,” said Martha Lauzen, executive director of the
Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
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She gives the small screen a lot of the credit for women’s gains in film.
“TV has been leading the way recently. A few years ago, when Glenn
Close was in ‘Damages’ and Kyra Sedgwick in ‘The Closer’ started showing
how incredibly talented they were, I’m sure that some of that seeped
into film.”
But Let’s Not Get Carried Away
While a number of elite over-40 actresses are making their mark
as never before, the situation hasn’t changed that much for most of
them. While 55 percent of film roles went to women in their 20s and 30s,
just 13 percent went to women in the 40s, according to the 2012 report
“It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World.”
“Attitudes toward women, gender and age are deeply embedded,” said
Lauzen. “These are very stable attitudes that take a long time to
evolve, but with steady and continued success our culture will be
moved.”
