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Stories about Hollywood’s love affair with youth and disregard for older women are perennial, but that script could now be put out to pasture.
Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images and MaxThroughout Hollywood’s history, an older actress was often only given a few options for roles: She could play a matron (Doubt), an abhorrent sexual predator (Notes on a Scandal, Misery), or a horror’s hag, a figure that goes as far back in Hollywood’s history as 1950’s Sunset Boulevard and still persists today (2022’s Barbarian and X). If none of those appealed, she could bow out of the limelight once she was “past her prime,
It’s no secret that Hollywood promotes younger women and that by the time they are 40 most actresses find themselves being overlooked for starring roles. Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal paid testament to this when a few years ago she said in an interview that at 37 years of age she was considered too old to play the love interest of a 55-year-old actor, and that by her mid-30's she was considered "over the hill". Even legends like Meryl Streep have spoken about how turning 40 made her worry about her career, when she said: "I remember as I was hovering around 40, I thought each movie would be m...