Hollywood's love affair with old dudes romancing young women...
This week, Maggie Gyllenhaal reminded us that ageism in Hollywood is alive and well – if you’re a woman, that is.
“There are things that are really disappointing about being an actress in Hollywood that surprise me all the time,” she told the Wrap. “I’m 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.”
Some of us (hey guys) still haven’t made it to the laughter stage, especially since movies have a long and illustrious history of pairing older men with much, much younger female co-stars. In fact, it’s such a commonplace trope that to whittle a list down to 10 choices was daunting and almost impossible (almost). So to re-establish the ridiculous habits of Hollywood casting directors, here are 10 movies that deliver some seriously astonishing age gaps, and expect us to run with them. (So note: there’s no Lolita or American Beauty here.)
1. Autumn in New York (2000)
2. Third Person (2013)
While 2011 delivered Unknown, an action vehicle starring Liam Neeson (then 58), who tries to save his wife (January Jones, then 33), Third Person takes the cake with the pairing of Neeson (61) and Olivia Wilde (29), who plays his “lover” (terrible word), Anna. That’s a full January Jones-in-Unknown between them.3. Casablanca (1942)
Truth: 1942’s tale of 41-year-old Humphrey Bogart reconciling his relationship with 27-year-old Ingrid Bergman is the stuff of classic cinema dreams. Is Casablanca a brilliant treasure? Of course. But it still doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge that the age difference exists, and should be indicative of that era, not our own.4. Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
5. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Edge of Tomorrow was an underrated movie that saw then 31-year-old Emily Blunt break out and take charge of an action narrative formerly reserved for her co-star, then 51-year-old Cruise. (The nickname “Full Metal Bitch” is truly the stuff of dreams.) In fact, for most of the film, it seemed the two would coexist as friends as opposed to romantic interests, but by the end, it seemed like Cruise’s character was more than willing to overlook that 20-year age gap.Kind of like what he’ll be doing alongside 31-year-old Sarah Wright Olsen in the upcoming Mena.
6. Six Days, Seven Nights (1998)
7. Dark Shadows (2012)
Johnny Depp’s characters are clearly going through something: in 1999, the 36-year-old was paired up with 19-year-old Christina Ricci in Sleepy Hollow. In 2006 (at 43) Depp romanced 21-year-old Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. And in 2011, he co-starred with 25-year-old Amber Heard, now his wife, in The Rum Diary. However, in 2012, 48-year-old Depp hooked up on screen with 24-year-old Bella Heathcote in Dark Shadows. And despite the Victorian era being a very different time, it just felt like more of the same old (and not old at all).8. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)
9. A Perfect Murder (1999)
Michael Douglas arguably attends the same school as Johnny Depp in that he has a long history of working with young co-stars. However, one-upping 1998’s Don’t Say A Word (in which he’s 20 years older than his on-screen wife, Famke Janssen) was 2001’s A Perfect Murder in which the veteran actor is married to Gwyneth Paltrow, who’s 28 years his junior. (Maybe we should write about that in Goop.)10. As Good as it Gets (1998)
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