Unrealistic age of female actors

Yeah, Baby is 15 in DD.... Not sure I would be as cool as her mother is by the end of the film with my DD gyrating with a (very obviously) grown man even someone as beautiful as Patrick Swayze

Another thing that had me thinking wasDirty Dancing. I was a teen when it came out and I liked it, but when I look back... a grown man romancing a teenaged girl on holiday with her parents? Yuck!

I always thought this! Isn't Baby technically a minor in it?

John Thaw was embarrassed by that casting, and said it was why the series panned. His wife Sheila Hancock (older than him!) wrote about it in her memoir.

The one that really annoyed me (because it was so unnecessary, what with it being a comfortable Sunday tea time show, not Hollywood glitz) was "A Year in Provence", starring the lovely John Thaw as Peter Mayle (playing younger than his years) and the equally lovely Lindsay Duncan as Annie Mayle (8 years younger than Thaw, and playing far older than her years)

@MorrisZapp

I guess in the same place where nearly 40 year old Bradley Cooper got to date 22 year old JLaw, even though they supposedly went to school together. Or where the characters played by Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams also went to school together in "The Greatest Showman" but when they reached adulthood, he had somehow become 12 years older than her.

Hollywood is a wonderful, magical place, where the normal rules of time and ageing don't apply.

Ok I've googled it. Walt is 12 years older than Skyler. And they were meant to have met in college. Who are all these men in their thirties meeting college students?

Let's look at the box set. Breaking Bad was absolutely brilliant but featured a man whose whole persona was meant to be geeky, beige physics teacher. Who apparently hadn't noticed he was married to a ten out of ten hottie.

I'm not sure if there was an age difference but there was a huge fuckability difference. And that's multi award winning, almost universally loved, highest quality drama.

@MorrisZapp

Oh I agree! I love the style of 'Old Hollywood' but just can't watch the films because of outrageous age gaps. Even though the women were made up to look more mature than they were, it's still cringey.

Another thing that had me thinking was Dirty Dancing. I was a teen when it came out and I liked it, but when I look back... a grown man romancing a teenaged girl on holiday with her parents? Yuck!

I find some of the Bond films hilarious. Think it was Roger Moore who did one as a borderline chubber. He was beating all these ninjas up with shoddy waist high kicks and unconvincing punches and getting girls young enough to be his daughter. 😂

The ones that truly gross me out are the alleged golden age Hollywood sex comedies and thrillers in which Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart or some other presidential looking type falls unpleasantly for a woman barely out of school.

He then tells her off, patronises the shit out of her, and calls her a 'silly little fool'. Meanwhile she cries when she displeases him.

My dad said oh you must watch Roman Holiday, it's an absolute classic. I watched it and was almost sick.

Cowboys often tended to be 40+ which can't have been too realistic surely.

So long as it's men who are older than the characters they portray, that's not a problem in Hollywood.

How old were the female actors in these films? If there were any?

Talking of Jennifer Lawrence, she also did Joy - about the woman who invented a new mop and made millions (or something, haven’t seen it!). Joy Mangano was late 30s when she started out and is now 60 odd. Yet they went with JL. I remember a reviewer pointing out this discrepancy.

Maybe John Wayne is a better example then - I was thinking of Dirty Harry in which CE wasn't really young.

Cowboys often tended to be 40+ which can't have been too realistic surely.

I think the take home poo is that money will get you the partner you want, which in moist cases is somebody younger.

Personally, I prefer not to take home poo.

I don't get the point about Clint Eastwood. He made his breakthrough "A Fistful of Dollars" when he was only 32, with other films such as "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "For a few Dollars More" shortly after. Hardly ancient.

My autocorrect really likes the word 'moist' atm. 😐

FFS. Typo city today...

Or Madonna, Courtney Cox, Sharon Stone, Susan Sarandon, Joan Collins, Robin Wright etc who are all with much younger men. It's pretty much the norm in Hollywood for women these days, so why isn't this reality shown on screen, if that's your logic?

I think the take home poo is that money will get you the partner you want, which in moist cases is somebody younger.

And films usually seem more interested in portraying an ideal than realism.

or Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins etc etc.

Or Madonna, Courtney Cox, Sharon Stone, Susan Sarandon, Joan Collins, Robin Wright etc who are all with much younger men. It's pretty much the norm in Hollywood for women these days, so why isn't this reality shown on screen, if that's your logic?

So it's not a shock the film's mirror reality.

But they don't, because most of them aren't set in Hollywood or high finance where it might be plausible that men would have much younger wives. Plenty of examples have been given of films or TV series based on books - or on real life - where the men and women were the same age but on screen, the female character suddenly became much younger than the man. So that's a poor excuse.

Clint Eastwood still did Bridges of Madison County.

That was a power behind the screen thing, but I still remember a scene of him in the bath and thinking WTF was he thinking?

Personally really tired of 20 year old women cast as having a law degree and enough years of practice to prove they're a legal powerhouse.

stillathing. Hollywood is full of those kind of relationships. It's normal to them. No one bats an eyelid at DiCaprio and his 20 something supermodel girlfriends or Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins etc etc.

So it's not a shock the film's mirror reality.

I think men heroes have got younger too.

Look at Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, etc, and compare them to most action movie starts nowadays (excepting those who made a name whilst younger and are still getting the roles Tom Cruise etc).

Are we really contesting the fact that men's attention is more likely to be held by a bombastic 25-30yo than a 55yo?

You're not answering my question. Yes, men are more likely to lust over a hot young thing, as are women - male delusions to the contrary. But what evidence is there that having the man implausibly older than the woman is a 'winning formula'? Wouldn't it be more 'winning' to have both the man and the woman played by hot young pieces? That way everyone is happy.

It really annoys me. In future I won’t watch/buy films where the female love interest is decades younger than the males. If there was a worldwide boycott by women of such films Hollywood would have to change.