When it comes to older actresses, TV and cinema need to grow up
Why are older women still treated so unfairly in the industry?
2 March 2021 • 5:00am
Angelina Jolie (then 29) played the mother of 28-year-old Colin Farrell in 2004's Alexander
Credit: Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros
You know how women claim they become invisible after 50? It’s hard to escape the truth of it in film and television, where diversity in race, religion and sexuality are trumpeted and yet the treatment of older actresses remains a shocking blind spot.
Cate Blanchett drily observed a few years ago that “actresses age in dog years”. Now former Royle Family star Sue Johnston has witheringly observed that having once been cast as Sean Bean’s wife in an episode of Inspector Morse, 30 years on she is playing his mother, in the new BBC drama Time. There may be an age gap of 15 years or so, but had Bean been older than Johnston, I am sure nobody would have considered him for the role of her father.