Ageism is a huge problem in Hollywood. Most actors get higher praise and more awards as they age, but the opposite is true for women. The younger an actress is, the better shot she has at an Oscar until she is considered too old to play roles that are realistically perfect for her. So which ten celebrities have been brave enough to speak about this problem? The ten below!
1. Maggie Gyllenhall
“I’m 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55,” said Gyllenhall according to The Wrap. “It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.”
2. Helen Mirren
3. Scarlett Johansson
“Acting is definitely harder for women,” said Johansson according to Yahoo. “Women kind of wilt as men sort of achieve as they get older, like wine or whatever. It’s like, ‘Oh, she’s past her prime and she can’t play a sex symbol.’ It’s just a preconceived notion about women in general and particularly in this industry. It’s a very vain, vain industry.”
4. Madonna
5. Zoe Saldana
“When men – producers – say, ‘You’re old,’ to me that is the most laughable f— ridiculous thing a moron could ever say,” Saldana told The Telegraph. “By the time you’re 28 you’re expired, you’re playing mommy roles. We’re not the ones putting ourselves in those places. We’re allowing ourselves to be put in those positions. I just won’t allow it.”
6. Tina Fey
7. Meryl Streep
“I remember turning to my husband and saying, ‘Well, what should we do? Because it’s over,” said the Oscar winning actress after her 40th birthday. “Once women passed childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level.”
8. Emma Thompson
“The age thing is insane,” she said according to Vulture. “It was ever thus. I remember saying years and years ago, when I was 35, that they’d have to exhume somebody to play my leading man … Nothing’s changed in that regard. If anything, it’s got worse.”
9. Anne Hathaway
“I can’t complain about it because I benefitted from it,” Hathaway told Glamour UK. “When I was in my early twenties, parts would be written for women in their fifties and I would get them. And now I’m in my early thirties and I’m like, “Why did that 24 year old get that part?”
10. Sarah Silverman
“As soon as a woman gets to an age where she has opinions and she’s vital and she’s strong, she’s systematically shamed into hiding under a rock,” explained Silverman on Totally Biased.
