For years, the archetypes were prisons. The "Desperate Housewife" (fading, fragile, needing a man). The "MILF" (a grotesque sexualization of motherhood). Or the "Wise Crone" (sexless, benign, there to heal the younger protagonist). These tropes robbed audiences of the messy, glorious reality of women who have lived. Where were the stories of ambition reignited after children leave the nest? Of sexual discovery after divorce? Of rage, greed, or joyful irreverence?
We are still in the early innings of a long-overdue revolution. For every complex role for a woman over 50, there are still twenty vacant, vapid “hot moms.” But the dam has cracked. The mature woman in cinema is no longer a prop for a younger person’s story. She is the story. And as any woman over 50 will tell you, that story is just getting to the good part.
The last half-decade has offered an answer.
Let’s not pretend the war is won. Leading men in their 60s still romance actresses young enough to be their granddaughters (see: the casting gap in any given Liam Neeson thriller). Action heroines are “aged out” by 40, while their male counterparts get a franchise reboot. The Academy still reserves “Best Actress” for young ingenues or transformative prosthetics, rarely for a woman simply playing her age with nuance.
What makes the current moment thrilling is the variety. We have the ruthless political machinations of The Crown ’s Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton). The tender, awkward second-chance romance of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Emma Thompson, baring her body and soul at 65). The absurdist horror of The Substance , which grotesquely literalized Hollywood’s fear of the aging female body.