It’s a new action thriller. Halle Berry plays a mother whose son is kidnapped and she’s trying to rescue him. I’ve seen the trailer but not the movie.
Here’s my nitpick. Berry is fifty years old. She’s playing the mother of a six-year-old in this movie. (Sage Correa, who’s playing the son, is actually nine years old.) Now this isn’t impossible. In fact, in real life, Berry has a four-year-old and a nine-year-old. But most fifty year old women do not have a six year old child. Berry’s age would make it more plausible that her character has a six year old grandchild.
I’m just wondering if this age factor gets acknowledged in the movie or is it ignored because Hollywood.
Well, considering it’s currently sitting at 40% on Rotten Tomatoes and only a 1/2 of a star (that’s a lower rating than "Sharknado 5!!) on RogerEbert.com, I think the age of Halle and the age of the child may be the least of this movie’s problems
I’m more annoyed at the Verizon phone commercial with John Stamos where he takes a call from his grandma mid-commercial. Now Stamos is 53, and while it’s possible for his grandmother to still be alive, it would have made far more sense for him to take a call from his own mother since we don’t even hear what the conversation is about. Really makes me think he himself ordered it to be his grandmother just to make him seem younger than he actually is.
Little Nemo wrote: " I actually like the way the recent Spiderman movie handled this. Peter Parker is supposed to be teenager. Why would his aunt be in her eighties?" Well, the comic Aunt May could have been a *great-*aunt. (As in mother or father’s aunt. Or Uncle Ben could have been the oldest sibling of Peter’s father and May a few years older than him.
It’s just acting. The age of the real-life actor shouldn’t necessarily have an affect on the age of the character. If someone can credibly pass as 10-15 years younger, why not?
Aunt May, back in the 60s, could have been intended to be a great-aunt, even if it were never spelled out in the comics. However, ISTM that 55-60 years ago … someone in their mid-50s in age – especially a woman – would be perceived as generically “old” to someone in the comic’s then-target audience.
So Aunt May, originally in the very earliest Spider-Man comics, was “old”. Could have been 55 years old. Could have been (implausibly) 85 years old. Would the art have been all that different back then, even given a speculative 30-year difference in the age of the Aunt May character?
Aunt May in the comics also was frequently ill. I believe she had multiple heart attacks, which could age her appearance. (Yet another problem for Peter to deal with, and another reason he considered it critical that she didn’t find out about his dangerous occupation.)
Yes, this. However, as a real life example, I am the youngest of 5 and my mom had me when she was 45, so she would’ve been 54 when I was 9. I’m now 52 and have a soon to be 16 year old. I honestly sometimes think about my mom being 50 and having a 5 year old and 4 other kids, every time I think about it I have a new admiration for her. I really don’t know how she handled it but she did, and she did it quite well.
As most posters are saying, Berry likely isn’t playing 50 in the movie. That said, my grandmother had her first child at 15 and the last at 50. One of her daughters, my aunt, had her youngest at 50 as well, and others had their last in their 40s. Berry herself has a younger child. I don’t think it’s as uncommon as you say, especially nowadays when people are waiting later to start families.
I guess I can’t get past the original question – is it bad casting to have a mother of a four year old play the mother of a six year old? But also, should Hollywood always cast someone to play a character who’s exactly the same age as they are?
Anyway, here’s a relevant article. Did you know that the woman who played Cary Grant’s mother in North by Northwest was actually younger than he was? Sean Connery is only 12 years older than Harrison Ford, and played his father in the third Indiana Jones movie. So…Hollywood plays fast and loose with ages. But in this case, they actually nailed it.
It would be awesome if she played the role in her Catwoman guise.
My wife and I are at the high end of parental age, so it doesn’t seem unusual to me, but we do find that we have to keep reminding ourselves that most parents in our kids’ cohort are a lot younger than we are.
In the movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman and played a recent college graduate (the movie starts at his graduation party – with an undergraduate degree) and was 30 years old. The ‘older woman’ he has an affair with was played by Anne Bancroft, who was 36 at the time. (Technically, Bancroft was older than Hoffman, but her character Mrs. Robinson has a daughter who is the same age as Dustin’s character.)
