There is NOTHING wrong with women at or approaching 40! How about Diane Lane!!!
Posted on 01/18/2004 5:53:14 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Female, forty and furious January 19, 2004 - 11:24AM
On the attack ... Sharon Stone, Holly Hunter and Meg Ryan.
Hollywood's most formidable female stars have united to condemn "sexist" film moguls for failing to find roles for women over 40.
Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter, Charlotte Rampling, Sharon Stone and Whoopi Goldberg are among a group of 30 actresses who have taken part in a documentary by Rosanna Arquette to be screened in Britain this summer.
The documentary is seen as a thinly veiled attack on moguls such as Harvey Weinstein - the portly co-owner of Miramax - who control the film industry and the careers of Hollywood actresses.
Arquette, 44, who rose to fame when she starred opposite Madonna in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan, said that her interest in what happened to 40-year-old women in Hollywood was sparked by the experience of
Debra Winger, the star of Terms of Endearment, who announced that she was quitting in 1996 aged 40. "Ageing," Arquette said this week, "equals career death."
In the documentary, called Searching For Debra Winger, Winger, who has been nominated for three Oscars, tells how she decided to quit and reveals that while she was working on An Officer And a Gentlemen the notorious producer Don Simpson told her that she needed diet pills.
Julianna Margulies, 37, who starred in ER opposite George Clooney, speaks frankly about the rigours of the casting couch. "You ask anyone that has been in those [audition] meetings. They say, 'Yeah that actress is great but would you f*** her?' And they ask all the men in the room."
The documentary will provoke heated debate in Hollywood, which has long been accused of discriminating against women for their age and beauty. Arquette told London's Sunday Telegraph that she had already received criticism from film bosses. "There are a lot of misogynistic men who are very angry about it," she said. "They've told me, 'It's just a bunch of chicks sitting around bitching about us'."
In the film, Daryl Hannah, 43, says that the root of the problem lies "with the guys who run the studios. They choose projects that they identify with and they say, 'I'd like to be that man having an affair with a chick of 18'."
Samantha Mathis, 33, agrees. "It's the revenge of the nerds syndrome, all these guys couldn't get a girlfriend in high school. They are smart but they have no social skills; suddenly they are running studios in a position of power."
Arquette's subjects are candid and often angry about the way the industry has spat them out once they have aged. Martha Plimpton, 33, says: "For women it's either, she's a starlet or she's an old hag." Whoopi Goldberg adds that film producers "want you to think that you're done" once actresses had turned 40.
Arquette, who is currently filming another documentary about musicians, continues to act and has recently been filming two comedies with the British actresses Imogen Stubbs and Jennifer Saunders.
She says that certain elements of Hollywood have always annoyed her. "I find it offensive that in Hollywood a 68-year-old movie star is paired with a 30-year-old, or someone even younger. You think, 'Come on, who are you kidding'. It is offensive."
Other interviewees said that they had financial problems when the parts dried up. Theresa Russell, 46, says: "It was really hard, I didn't get an audition for years and I started running out of money. I thought, what else can I do? I resent being in this situation. They want to put you out to pasture."
In any other profession, she says, "your work would get better the older you got". Holly Hunter, 45, who won an Oscar for The Piano, believes actresses are at their peak at 40. "The deal is that actresses who are good have probably never been better once they hit 40. Once I hit 40 I had charms that I didn't have when I was 30 and I want to use them."
Teri Garr, 53, who has appeared in more than 50 films, including Tootsie, insists that films should reflect the existence of older women in real life. "There are people who are my age and older who still exist in the world, so there should be writers who write stories that include them. There should be parts for us, even if they are smaller."
She adds: "I remember when I was young the great actresses telling me, 'Wait till they tell you your face has been ravaged by time'."
Diane Lane, 39, dislikes the vocabulary used to describe older women's looks. "If you want to live you must age. Beauty has to be a certain way [in Hollywood]." If you age, she says, "it is described as 'damaged beauty' or 'sad beauty' or 'aged beauty'." She adds: "Character actresses will always work freely because they are not coming from the immaculate time when one looked perfect." Adrienne Shelley, 38, the star of The Unbelievable Truth, tells of how much sex plays a part of being a Hollywood actress. She says: "I get a call in my car on the way to an audition from the agent. He said, 'What is really important is that they think you are f***able'.
"The man walks in and looks right at my tits and I saw in his face that there was no way I was going to get the part. And yet in the real world there is no way I would give this guy the time of day."
Lane urges women to make more of an issue of the problem. "When women don't want to talk about these issues it is so awful," she says. "Hiding away just perpetuates the problem.
"Women want to watch other women of their own age sometimes. All these young people are great but let them watch each other. We want to watch us."
This line of thinking is cruel. Would you describe your mother that way? Your sister? Your wife, when you are over 40? These people you are talking about are pretty attractive, for the most part. I don't care for the actresses themselves or their whining, but I just felt PAIN at your description of us over-40s. So that's how the average man sees us?
I can't speak for Jaysun, but I'll speak for myself: none of the women in my family go braless in silk at awards ceremonies. If they did, they'd deserve the cruel remarks.
Meryl Streep is 52 or 53.
Demi Moore is still with Ashton Kutcher (kid on that 70s show)I believe but I think she said they were not getting hitched.
There are pleanty of talented actresses over 40 who work regularly.
Hell, Goldie Hawn is almost 60 and no great talent yet stays busy.
Some of these ageing starlets just refuse to age gracefully imho.
Most of these women could get involved in small films that would play to a more narrow audience. While I have no interest in seeing them, there is probably enough interest that some of them could get made. Examples of such movies are Steel Magnolias, Divine Secrets of the YaYah Sisterhood, Boys on the Side (not about over 40's, but definitely a chick flick), and on and on. As far as I'm concerned, there's too much sisterhood and not enough yaya, but there are other over forty stories that they could work in.
I think what these ladies are complaining about though, is that they're not getting the "star treatment" anymore. The days of being able to demand and receive special treatment are over. There's also the issue that once you've been cast as a "type", it's difficult to play against that type. The same thing happens to child actors. How many of the cast of "Facts of Life" have gotten work, even though they're all still under forty? None, because people can't accept them in different roles.
Many of these actresses are also trying to continue to look as if they're younger than they are, and that makes it difficult to cast them in character roles. I'm not talking about actresses like Keaton, who hasn't had a face lift and just tries to stay in good shape. Amanda Blake looked Chinese by the time she died, she'd had her face pulled so many times. Maggie Smith, for example, has played Professor McGonagall in all the Harry Potter movies, but she wouldn't have been able to play that part if she had succumbed to the temptation to have four or five face lifts.
BTW, I teach in a college, and Kirsten Dunst is in. Get ready guys, Cameron Diaz is considered over the hill, as is Alicia Silverstone, if they even know who she is.
The problem is that when people are good, they are good in a very wide variety of ways; should you film to indugle that nature, you limit your audience. By contrast, when people are bad, many of them are bad in ways that are highly common and reliable; sex and violence --that's simple!
Sadly, for marketing types, filming bad stuff is a good way of limiting business risk.
Me.
This is over 40.....wouldent kick it out of bed for eating crackers....would you. ;)
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