Now that I’m in my forties, I have noticed that they seem to be getting younger. “They” being everyone, I suppose, but for purposes of this thread, female leads in movies.
I just saw You Light Up My Life again this morning. (Flipping through channels). Didi Conn was in her mid-20s when she did that film.
I think if it were done today the lead would be a teenager.
In general, I just have the sense that the female leads of film today are younger than they were in the seventies.
Or am I crazy?
I think you’re right. Just like with music, teens are the demographic with lots of money to spend going to movies, buying CDs, etc. etc. This leads to lots of anything trying to entice kids to the theatres, including movies with other kids as leads. Why these kids have so much money to waste is the bigger sociocultural question these days. Bigger allowances–yes, but why? More kids getting jobs at younger ages–maybe. Have there been any studies about this?
I’m 23. I’m thinking they probably have part-time jobs with nothing real to spend the money on except entertainment. I wouldn’t know, I started college at 16 so by the time I was able to get a job I was paying for school with it. (actually, I had a summer job before that, but the proceeds went toward musical equipment, for the most part).
They’re getting younger.
Look at the film “Alien,” a major blockbuster in 1979. Most of the people in that film were in their forties and fifties, aside from Sigourney Weaver, who was in her late twenties.
If they were to remake it right now, how old would each of the cast members be?
You’re getting old.
My last conversation with a cop started “Can I see your licence please sir?”
My previous conversation ended “Get back in the car f*ckwit!”
With “You Light Up My Life” they would of course cast one of the many teen pop stars to do it. Probably Mandy Moore.
But look at the cast of Charlie’s Angles.
Released in 2000 that makes
Cameron Diaz 28
Drew Barrymore 25
Lucy Liu 32
at release time.
I think people try to look younger longer. A person who is 25 now dresses and acts like a teen-ager.
Bah.
Anyone younger than Bette Midler or Ted Danson is an embryo, I tells ya.
Oh, great, Eve! Now I have a mental image of the embryonic love child of Ted Danson and Bette Midler…a balding Jewish bathhouse singer having a January/December romance with Barry Manilow! :eek:
I had a major sshhuuddeerr when I saw the panties-only Britney Spears cover of Rolling Stone. Part of my brain knew how old she was, but she had made a program of pretending innocence. Still, her “Hi, I’m Britney, and these are my breasts.” smile was a jolt.
A big part of it is Hollyweird using older actresses to play younger roles. TV Show Roswell: all of the leads were in their 20s. Even Amber Tymblyn who plays the 16 year old on Joan of Arcadia has already passed the big 20.
This is a societal problem, methinks. Because we cast women as children. Thus we start thinking of children as women, and we get Brittney and Avrill and all those people. Of course they’ve been performing for eight or ten years. . .
I’ll still take Sigourney Weaver over Britnney Spears, anyday. Sooner or later you either have to talk or kill aliens and Britnney is going to be no use in either case.
Britney would be a good victim though.
She’d give birth to twin aliens through her boobs, of course. 
They incubate in silicone?! :eek:
But it’s still better than the “methinks” days. At the Globe they had to cast (male) children as women. Because…
Simon Callow was wonderful!
I agree that female leads, and many male leads, in movies are looking younger whatever their actual ages.
Go see About Schmidt again. That’ll make you feel better.
I’ve never understood this argument. No one is “taking away” any roles of older women. When these older women were in their 20s they got the sexy heroine in danger or the ass kicking female lead or the object of every man’s desire… etc, etc.
Now when these women are older, they roles they used to get go to the crowd that is currently in their 20s.
The way some people talk you’d think that before the 80s no one under 40 was allowed to be in a movie…
Heck, they have acid for blood…
I think it’s more a matter of “Why are male stars like Sean Connery and Harrison Ford working fairly steadily as dramatic and romantic leads well into their 70s but female stars like Kathleen Turner and Susan Sarandon are finding parts to be relatively few and far between?”
Yeah, the women played those parts in their 20s. So did Connery and Ford, but they’re still playing them! Yet the women are supposed to just get out of the way? “You got your chance…make room!”
To be far Sean Connery hasn’t played a romantic lead in over 8 years. The same with Harrison Ford, who has not played a romantic lead in over 5 years.
This is the kind of argument that you hear enough times you start to think it’s true.
I also never see anyone making the argument that a lot of older actresses like Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton and Jamie Lee Curtis have enough clout to make their own roles.
It’s not a social problem. They cast “women as children” because it’s illegal to make children work long hours on set. I’m not sure what the legal limit it…4 maybe? Eliza Dushku was only 16 or 17 her first season of BtVS, but she was also an emancipated minor. The producers don’t have any choice but to hire adults to play teenagers because they have a show to produce…
You got me on Connery. I really thought he’d been in more new films than IMDB lists for him recently (mostly Bond retrospectives in the last five years).
But Ford’s was in Random Hearts in 1999 and Six Days, Seven Nights in 1998, both romantic leads.
Marketing to teenagers seems to have been increasing steadily as long as I can remember (I’m 44). (The claim is, since they’re seeking peer status, their choices can still be swayed by advertising that claims to confer it).
It seems especially pronounced on TV: I read a while back that scriptwriters who had worked on MAS*H were leaving it off their resumes for fear of revealing their age.
Harrison Ford isn’t “well into his seventies” he’s 61.
It does bother me a little to see men of his age and older getting paired onscreen with women young enough to be their children.