When men in Hollywood hit 50 years old, they might earn the title “silver fox” for “aging like fine wine.”
But when women in Hollywood reach the big five-oh? Well, they’re likely not in Hollywood anymore.
Characters aged 50 and older make up less than a quarter of all television and film roles.
And from that already small pool of 50+ year-old characters, only one in every four is a woman.
That’s all according to a study published in 2020 by the Geena Davis Institute, a nonprofit that analyzes media representation.
And, women characters over age 50 don’t just get marginal screentime. Often, their story arcs—if they can even be considered arcs—are meaningless or stereotypical.
ANGELA ALLYN: The mother-in-law that everybody hates, or the grandmother that’s crazy, or, you know, the mother-in-law who’s got dementia.
That was Angela Allyn. She coordinates community-based arts programming for the city of Evanston. And, she’s witnessed these stats about media representation for older women firsthand.
ALLYN: I’d been hearing from colleagues that essentially they’re being forced into retirement because there aren’t there were no good roles for women– or very few roles for women over 50.
And…when roles were available?
ALLYN: A lot of times they’re like, you know, 35 can play 50. Well, that’s no fair. Get a 50-year-old.
So, in 2022, she started The Old Lady Project: a competition that calls for scripts featuring nuanced female-identifying characters who are 50 years or older.
ALLYN: We look for characters that are fully fleshed out and who go through some kind of a change. I also tend to look for characters who are not just buffeted about by circumstance, that they have some agency.
In its first year, The Old Lady Project received over 600 script submissions from 33 countries. Scripts are judged by a panel of actors, producers, and theater lovers from all over the country. Then, the winning submissions are performed in a staged reading at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston.
Charles Hertz is one of the three winners from last year’s competition. Like Allyn, he’s seen his talented women colleagues struggle to find authentic roles for their age. Hertz says he applauds the Old Lady Project for challenging writers to tell inclusive and representative stories.
CHARLES HERTZ: Honestly, it’s my honor to know and work with those people, and I do feel that I need to keep them, you know, in my thoughts, whenever I’m writing.
Hertz’s play features two co-workers whose decades-long friendship is suddenly challenged by retirement. According to Allyn, scripts about female friendships are one of the most common—and often the most compelling—entries.
ELLEN ABRAMS: I’m a playwright who got started late-ish in life, and now I’m just trying to make the best of that I can with the time I have left to me.
That’s Ellen Abrams, another one of last year’s winners. Her play? A pantomime ping pong game between two senior center residents bonding over the afterlife and Frank Sinatra.
Abrams has long noticed the lack of stories told by and about older women. So, she tries to remedy the gap herself, with complex characters that don’t rely on typical old lady tropes.
ABRAMS: Normal women, but older. But they still have lives! They still have valuable lives, and they’re still amusing, and they can joke with one another, and they enjoy life, and they’re still trying to live their lives for as long as they can, with as in as good health as they possibly can.
Allyn says this authentic portrayal of age is largely taboo both on stage and on screen.
ALLYN: Well, you know, we live in a culture that denies that you’re going to get old. What is a true representation of what it is to age? What are, what are your concerns? What are the most important things to you? I mean, yeah, there’s aspects that, yeah, when you get to be a certain age, your friends are dying like, that’s not a story that’s told.
But, she says, these stories need to be told—because everyone deserves to see themselves equally represented in the media. Here’s Hertz again.
HERTZ: It is just such older women who are incredibly significant to most of us, you know, so I think it’s very important that such women get their due representation in the art that we create.
This year, The Old Lady Project will accept submissions from November 3 to December 15.
In April, the winning scripts will be cast and performed…and, finally, these characters won’t be played by 30-year-olds.
ABRAMS: And that’s what you hope to find, like actors who get you and you who get them.
For WNUR News, I’m Georgia Kerrigan.
