Was Russell Crowe right to say that female actors in their 40s should give up pretending to be young and start taking roles that reflect their real age?
Or is the problem that there just aren’t that many roles for older women – and that’s because Hollywood only ever wants to put sexy young things in its films?
Well, the debate has gone off.
Crowe made his comments about female actors in an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, back in December.
He wasn’t trying to be start a media storm, or be deliberately provocative. He was talking about himself, personally, having just turned 50.
Fifty is a significant turning point in any man’s life. That’s why it’s called the Big 5-0. You’re not old at 50, but you certainly aren’t young.
Women in Hollywood have long complained that it’s hard to get good roles after 40, let alone 50, so I asked Russell: is it the same for men? Was he finding it harder to compete with all the young guns, now that he was 50? Was that, in part, why he had turned to directing? (Russell has just made his directorial debut with The Water Diviner in which he also stars.)
Russell said no. He didn’t mind being 50. He was proud of his long experience – 44 years on film sets – and he talked about the maturity and empathy he had developed, since becoming a father of two boys. He pointed out that he plays a father of three grown sons inThe Water Diviner; he wouldn’t have been able to do that at age 25; at the same time, he probably won’t play the Gladiator again.
Then he launched into a spirited defence of those female actors – Meryl Streep, and Helen Mirren – who are over 60, and still getting work. He remembered a funny story he’d once heard about a female actor who refused to play a mother of four children, because it might remind the audience that she was getting old.
“The best thing about the industry I’m in – movies – is that there are roles for people in all different stages of life,” Russell said.
“To be honest, I think you’ll find that the woman who is saying that (the roles have dried up) is the woman who at 40, 45, 48, still wants to play the ingénue, and can’t understand why she’s not being cast as the 21 year old.
“Meryl Streep will give you 10,000 examples and arguments as to why that’s bullshit, so will Helen Mirren, or whoever it happens to be. If you are willing to live in your own skin, you can work as an actor. If you are trying to pretend that you’re still the young buck when you’re my age, it just doesn’t work.”
Russell has since been criticized, including by Zero Dark Thirty actress Jessica Chastain who said: “There are some incredible actresses in their 50s and 60s that are not getting opportunities in films.”
Russell Crowe has been defended by Meryl Streep but slammed by Jessica Chastain.
She’s hardly the first to make that point: some years ago, Rosanna Arquette famously made a documentary, featuring actors Jane Fonda (then 64); Charlotte Rampling (57), Holly Hunter, (44), Debra Winger (46) and Frances McDormand (45) about how hard it was to get work over 40.
In recent days, Meryl Streep, has come out in support of Russell, telling an interviewer in New York: “The Russell Crowe thing, I’m so glad you asked … I read what he said. He said, ‘I’m too old. I can’t be the Gladiator anymore. I’m playing parts that are appropriate to my age’ … I agree with him. It’s good to live within the place that you are.”
As for what the statistics say, well, they’re not on Russell’s side.
One recent study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University shows that women are dramatically under-represented as major characters. Those women who do make it onto the screen tend to be younger than their male counterparts.
Hollywood would of course argue that this is merely a reflection of what audiences want to see.
The study also pointed out the men in film tend to be paired with much younger lovers (Harrison Ford was 37 when he played the lead inEmpire Strikes Back; his love interest, Carrie Fisher, was 23; Johnny Depp was 48 when he took the lead in theThe Rum Diary; his love interest, Amber Heard was 25; and so on.)
Crowe’s love interest in The Water Diviner is played by Olga Kurylenko – who in real life, is 35.
Olga Kurylenko and Russell Crowe at The Water Diviner world premiere in Sydney.
Some may quibble, but as the director, Russell could just as easily have cast, say, Margot Robbie, who is 24. But Olga’s character is the mother of a young son, and the wife of a missing Turkish soldier, so Russell did the right thing and cast around for an actress who was about the right age. Sure, he could have cast a woman who was the same age as his character – 50 – and given her adult sons, who were missing on the battlefield, just as his sons were missing – and he could have had himself falling intoherarms, … and maybe the audience would have loved that. I guess we’ll never know.
