Film blogMoviesMeryl Streep: old enough to be their Mamma Mia!
Hollywood women are finally being called upon to play their real ages. About time too
Meryl Streep outnumbers all her male co-stars in years in Mamma Mia!
The most surprising thing about Meryl Streep high-kicking her way through musical campfest Mamma Mia isn't the sight of the 59-year-old Oscar winner belting out Abba hits like some Pop Idol hopeful. Rather, it's the fact that she is actually older than her three leading men - 55-year-old Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, 57 and Colin Firth, a tender 47.
This isn't just a Hollywood rarity; it's a miracle on a par with Tom Cruise renouncing Scientology. There's a long and depressing history of actresses being cast in roles too old for them, presumably to perpetuate the myth that women on the big screen do not age.
Deborah Kerr was 17 years younger than Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember and Rex Harrison 21 years older than Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. A female character would seldom be that much older than her lover without it being a key plot point, like in The Graduate. Although despite declaring "I'm old enough to be your mother" in that film, Anne Bancroft was actually only six years older than baby-faced Dustin Hoffman.
And it isn't just in romantic relationships that actresses need to act older: Hitchcock's North By Northwest is a classic example. A matronly manner and frumpy hairdo didn't disguise the fact that, at just eight years older than Cary Grant, Jessie Royce Landis was a bit young to be playing his mother. Meryl Streep was 43 when she played 34-year-old Mel Gibson's mother in Hamlet, but that pales in comparison to Angelina Jolie playing Colin Farrell's mum in Alexander - she's only a year older than him.
Six years ago, Rosanna Arquette made a film called Searching for Debra Winger, in which the likes of Melanie Griffith, Daryl Hannah and Sharon Stone bemoaned the lack of roles for women over 40 in Hollywood.
But, since then, things seem to have improved. Aside from this year's The Edge of Love - in which Keira Knightley plays a school friend of Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), despite being 11 years younger than him - it's no longer all doom and gloom for older actresses. One of the biggest films of this year starred a quartet of 40-something Manhattan women and one of the most eagerly anticipated (in some quarters) - a remake of The Women - stars 46-year-old Meg Ryan alongside the fabulous Annette Bening, 50. Not only that, but three of last year's Best Actress Oscar nominees were over 50: Judi Dench, the irrepressible Ms Streep and, of course, eventual winner Helen Mirren.
It's good to see Meryl and co redressing the balance. Let's hope this signals the end of unconvincingly youthful-looking matriarchs, and uncomfortable sex scenes between craggy old men and much-younger actresses.
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