Mature Meryl and Hot Helen: Hollywood, Gossip and the ‘Appropriately’ Ageing Actress

Abstract

In a 2009 article from the UK Guardian, Vanessa Thorpe writes,

When a film star seduces someone 20 or 30 years their junior on screen, the audience doesn’t bat an eyelid. In fact, it is an established cinema convention. If the older star is a woman, however, public reaction is harder to predict. But now Hollywood, so long accused of sexism because of the way it treats female talent, finally seems prepared to tackle a subject once regarded as beyond the pale: sex and the sixty-something woman.¹