This was a big movie year for me, guys. I saw not one, but TWO movies nominated for Oscars this year. Okay, so one of them was Inside Out, but I’m still counting at. At least Mad Max: Fury Road is basically as far from a wholesome family movie as it gets. I’m not sure I’m even old enough to have seen it.
Speaking of age, I couldn’t help but notice that both the Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress awards went to women in their twenties. (They were Alicia Vikander, 27, for The Danish Girl, and Brie Larson, 26, for Room, respectively.) Clearly I haven’t seen either movie, so I will assume their accolades are well-deserved.
But now that I’m clinging to my mid-thirties by the skin of my teeth, (mid-thirties lasts until 39, right?), I’m ever more aware of which roles are available to women as they get older. And since, as Oscar Wilde says, “Life imitates art,” movie roles count, dammit!
Fueled by a whiff of a suspicion of injustice, I naturally turned to Wikipedia. “Lemme find out exactly how few older women have ever won Best Actress and compare that to Best Actor,” I snickered. I was sure this had been done a million times before. I mean, this is not new. There are no good roles for older women, everyone knows that.
Sure enough, only 8 out of 87 Best Actress winners have been over 60-years-old. And three of those winners have been Katharine Hepburn! But here’s the shocker. Only 7 out of 87 Best Actor winners have been over 60-years-old. It looks like Hollywood doesn’t discriminate against gender when they are discriminating against age, after all.
Except … <cut to a scene of me typing furiously in the moonlight while I call up yet another Wikipedia page> … only ONE actor has EVER won Best Actor while he was in his 20s. (It was Adrien Brody for The Pianist at age 29, if you really need to know.) Meanwhile, a gobsmacking 31 women (out of 87, remember) have won Best Actress in their twenties.
Again, this is nothing particularly new, but it is glaringly reflected in this year’s winners. (The lack of racial diversity in the nominees was also, of course, striking. But much has already been said about that elsewhere.) In a time when a middle-aged actress is far more likely to receive press about the state of her face than the quality of her performance, we still expect actors to mature like fine wines.
Listen, I’m not saying that comparing Leonardo DiCaprio to a fine wine isn’t an apt comparison because it’s clearly the perfect comparison; our dear, rich, full-bodied Barolo with just a hint of mulberry. I’m simply saying that there was an expectation that DiCaprio had to wait to grow into the role of a great actor while women are expected to shine bright and then fade out. (There are many notable exceptions, to be sure. I generalize here.)
In any case, it looks like my own days of Hollywood dreaming are behind me. I’ll have to wait for one of my kids win an Oscar and hope to get a glimpse of my first name scrolling past on a ticker. Or maybe it’ll just say “Mom.”