Goldie Hawn’s character in The First Wives Club summed it up best: “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: babe, district attorney, or Driving Miss Daisy.”
That was almost 30 years ago, but we’re still having the conversation.
A land of airbrushed perfection, Hollywood has always had an issue with ageing – reflected in who wins what at the big awards. For decades, there has been an age disparity between Oscar-winning actors and actresses, with veteran male stars feted, while for women it has typically been the younger “ingenues” collecting the gongs.
There has been much talk of change in the industry in recent years – but is it actually happening?
Sky News analysis of the Oscars acting categories across 10-year periods shows there has typically always been a gap between the average age of female winners and male winners.
However, following the results at recent ceremonies – cemented with wins for Everything Everywhere All At Once stars Michelle Yeoh (now 61) and Jamie Lee Curtis (now 65) in 2023 – the average age gap closed for the first time last year.
Image: Oscars gender age gap
What happens if you look at single years?
The graph above shows the average ages during 10-year periods to show when trends emerge, but taking single years into account the difference has often been even starker.
In 2000, for instance – the age gap between the then 25-year-old Hilary Swank (best actress) and 24-year-old Angelina Jolie (best supporting actress) was small. But in the equivalent male categories, the gap was almost 30 years – between Kevin Spacey (40 at the time, best actor) and Michael Caine (then 67, best supporting actor). This means that, across both the male and female categories that year, the average age gap was 29 years.
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In 2013, the average age gap was 29.5 years, with Jennifer Lawrence (22 at the time) and Anne Hathaway (30) winning the female acting awards, and Daniel Day-Lewis (55) and Christoph Waltz (56) picking up the trophies for the men.
That’s not to say this doesn’t occasionally happen the other way around. In 1990, the acting age gap was 29 years but this time with the female average the higher number. The winners? Daniel Day-Lewis and Denzel Washington (then aged 32 and 35); Brenda Fricker (45) and Jessica Tandy (80) – for, interestingly, her performance in Driving Miss Daisy.
In 95 years of the Oscars, this is the only time the female average age has been more than 20 years higher than the male average age – something that has happened 14 times the other way round. Hawn really did have a point.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the honouring of older men and younger women was all particularly prevalent in the 1990s and 2000s; in the 20 years from 1990 to 2009, the average age of female winners was higher than the male winners on just three occasions.
But in the last 10 years, there have been five years when the female average age has been higher, and five years when the male average age has been higher.
Equality!
Well, not quite. If things go as predicted this year then the two male winners will be on average about 16 years older than the two female stars – but then again, last year, the average age for the women was nine-and-a-half years more than that for the men.
It’s too early to say for definite that Hollywood has turned a corner – but the data certainly shows promise following years of conversations about the need for improving and diversifying roles for women of all ages on screen.
‘In the ’60s, I never saw another woman’
Image: Jodie Foster won her second Oscar for best actress in 1992, for her performance in Silence Of The Lambs. Pic: AP/NewsBase
Jodie Foster was just 12 when she controversially starred as a child prostitute alongside Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver in 1976 – the film that earned the star her first Oscar nomination, for best supporting actress, at 14, and made her one of the youngest nominees ever.
She went on to win the Academy Award for best actress twice, for The Accused and Silence Of The Lambs in 1989 and 1992 – both before she was 30 – and is now, more than 30 years later, up for best supporting actress once again for her performance in Nyad. The film stars Annette Bening (nominated for best actress) as endurance-swimmer Diana Nyad, who at 60 decided to re-attempt the punishing 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida which eluded her in her youth, and Foster as her friend and trainer Bonnie Stoll.
Image: Foster as Bonnie Stoll and Annette Bening as Diana Nyad. Pic: Kimberley French/Netflix
Foster, 61, says the industry has come “a long way” since she started out starring in adverts as a child in the 1960s. “I’ve been in the business for 58 years,” she tells Sky News. “When I first started in the ’60s, I never saw another woman… sometimes it was the lady who played my mom, or sometimes a make-up artist, but for the most part it was really just an entirely male environment.
“That’s changed, little by little by little, with [female] technicians coming in and female producers and now, really just recently for the United States, women directors. That was the last bastion of change, where we now have more women directors… I have seen that change, for sure.”
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‘It was an entirely male environment’
The actress has most recently been seen in the latest season of the hit series True Detective, in which she stars as a police chief alongside Kali Reis as a state trooper, investigating mysterious disappearances from a research station in Alaska.
After “playing strong women my whole life”, Foster says two female characters leading a show should not be headline news – but what has changed for women on screen is the way characters are developed. “The world of complexity hasn’t always been reserved for women. We were ‘the mother of…’, ‘the sister of…’, ‘the prostitute’, you know. It has taken a lot of work by women to flesh out female characters in the industry over time.”
‘You don’t pay us as much – but we still have some clout’
Image: Olivia Colman accepts her best actress award at the Oscars in 2019. Pic: Matt Petit/AMPAS/Reuters
British actress Olivia Colman, who won the Oscar for best actress in 2019 for her portrayal of Queen Anne in The Favourite, and can currently be seen starring in mystery comedy Wicked Little Letters, says things are getting better but there is still a way to go – when it comes to roles and pay.
“Let’s fight for that journey,” she tells Sky News. “Over half the world’s population is women. We are interested in seeing ourselves reflected in stories, as all people are – wherever you’re from, you want to see yourself reflected in a story.
“I don’t stop watching telly once I’m 31, or films or stories or theatre, I still want to watch. And although you don’t pay us as much, we still have some clout. So – don’t underestimate women!”
‘More great roles – and not just for Meryl Streep’
Film critic Anna Smith, co-host of the Girls On Film podcast, says there has been a history of Hollywood casting younger women alongside older male stars.
“Whereas you can be a sexy George Clooney getting older, women – even in their 40s – can struggle to get work. I know some actresses that say when they reach a certain age, there’s a couple of decades where they’re a bit stuck because they either play the mum role or they have to wait and play the grandmother role. There aren’t as many meaty roles for women of all ages as there should be – and when they do happen, sometimes the older roles, they can be very cliched.”
However, Smith thinks that while there is still more work to be done to level the playing field, there has definitely been a shift in the last decade – and since the rise of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements especially.
“We are seeing more great roles for older actresses and a variety – not just Meryl Streep, you know, there’s a little bit more out there for everybody. You look at Frances McDormand in Nomadland [in 2021]… she gives a wonderful performance and [it was] great to see that recognised at the Oscars and many other ceremonies.”
Image: Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Pic: A24
There is one thing she points out about Everything Everywhere All At Once, though. “The central role was originally conceived for Jackie Chan, and then they flipped it. And what you actually often find in recent years, when you get a film that is recognised well at the Oscars etc, when it’s a strong female character, a complex female character, it was often planned for a man…
“I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand – great that people are open-minded enough now to go, hang on a minute, let’s just check our bias here, why is this role going to a man when it could go to a woman? That’s great, to challenge your bias, but at the same time, that does suggest complex roles for women aren’t being written specifically for women.”
So what needs to be done?
“I think there needs to be more investment in independent film and also people keeping an eye on the Hollywood machine,” says Smith. “Anyone working in the diversity area within big studios, I think, has got a real influence and the potential to make a change.
“The more people of different ages and ethnicities and backgrounds who are working in film and keep an open mind and are challenging their own biases, the more interesting and complex older characters we get. But I would also love to see people judging women less by their looks. I think there’s a real issue still in Hollywood, where some women feel pressured to have cosmetic surgery at a certain age in order to conform to some kind of unrealistic beauty standards.
“I think it’s a problem that is hopefully going away slightly, because you do look at the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis and she looks like an ordinary woman of her age, which is incredible. I would like to see more of that.”
In the Oscars acting results of recent years at least, it does feel like Hollywood has moved on from the ages of babe, district attorney and Driving Miss Daisy only.
Now Tinseltown just has to continue allowing women to grow old on screen, gracefully or otherwise – exactly the same as the men.
She told Sky News how returning feels like the society has “made good on something that was wrong”.
Image: Sophie Lloyd, who tricked the Magic Circle into believing she was a man
How did she infiltrate that exclusive group that nowadays counts the likes of David Copperfield and Dynamo as members?
In March of that year, she took her entry exam posing as a teenage boy, creating an alter-ego called Raymond Lloyd.
“I’d played a boy before,” she explained, but “it took months of preparation” to secretly infiltrate the Circle’s ranks half a year before it would officially vote to let women in.
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“Really, going back 30 years, men’s clubs were like, you know, just something you accepted.”
The men-only rule had been in place since the Circle was formed in 1905. The thinking behind it being that women just couldn’t keep secrets.
Aware of the frustration of female magicians at the time, Lloyd felt she was up for the challenge of proving women could be as good at magic as the men.
The idea was, in fact, born out of a double act, thought up by a successful magician called Jenny Winstanley who’d wanted to join herself but wasn’t allowed.
She recognised the hoax would probably only work with a much younger woman posing as a teenage boy, and met Lloyd through an acting class.
Image: Sophie Lloyd as teenage magician Raymond Lloyd. Pic: Sophie Lloyd
Lloyd said: “We had to have a wig made… the main thing was my face, I had plumpers made on a brace to bring his jawline down.”
To hide her feminine hands, she did the magic in gloves, which she says “was so hard to do, especially sleight of hand.”
The biggest test came when she was invited for a drink with her examiner, where she had to fake having laryngitis.
“After the exam, which was 20 minutes, he invited Jenny and I – she played my manager – and I sat there for one hour and three quarters and had to say ‘sorry, I’ve got a bad voice’.”
Raymond Lloyd passed the test, and his membership certificate was sent through to Sophie.
Then, in October of the same year, when whispers started circulating that the society was going to open its membership to both sexes, she and Jenny decided to reveal all. It didn’t go down well.
Rather than praise her performance, members were incandescent about the deception and, somewhat ironically, Raymond Lloyd was kicked out just before women members were let in.
Lloyd said: “We got a letter… Jenny was hurt… she was snubbed by people she actually knew, that was hurtful. However, things have really changed now…”
Three decades later the Magic Circle put out a nationwide appeal stating they wanted to apologise and Lloyd was recently tracked down in Spain.
While Jenny Winstanley died 20 years ago in a car crash, as well as Sophie receiving her certificate on Thursday, her mentor’s contribution to magic is being recognised at the special show that’s being held in both their honour at the Magic Circle.
Lloyd says: “Jenny was a wonderful, passionate person. She would have loved to be here. It’s for her really.”
Counter terror police are assessing a video reported to be from a concert by Irish rappers Kneecap.
A social media clip of the hip hop trio on stage appeared to show one member of the group shout “up Hamas, up Hezbollah”.
The footage was posted online by Danny Morris from the Jewish security charity, the Community Security Trust.
He said it was from a gig last November at London’s Kentish Town Forum.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: “We have been made aware of the video and it has been referred to the counter terrorism internet referral unit for assessment and to determine whether any further police investigation may be required.”
Hamas and Hezbollah are both proscribed as terrorist groups in the UK. Under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, it is an offence to express “an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation”.
Sky News has contacted Kneecap’s management for comment.
It comes after TV personality Sharon Osbourne called for Kneecap’s US work visas to be revoked after accusing them of making “aggressive political statements” including “projections of anti-Israel messages and hate speech” at Coachella Music and Arts Festival.
The retrial of Harvey Weinstein has begun in New York – with a prosecutor telling the court the former Hollywood mogul used “dream opportunities as weapons” to prey on the three women accusing him of sexual abuse.
Weinstein, who is now 73, is charged with raping one woman and forcing oral sex on two others. He has strenuously denied the allegations.
Following a lengthy jury selection process due to the high-profile nature of the retrial, the prosecution has now opened its case at the same courthouse in Manhattan.
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Why is Weinstein getting a retrial?
Attorney Shannon Lucey told the court the Oscar-winning producer and studio boss used “dream opportunities as weapons” against the female accusers.
“The defendant wanted their bodies, and the more they resisted, the more forceful he got,” she said.
Weinstein had “enormous control over those working in TV and film because he decided who was in and who was out,” the court heard. “He had all the power. They had none.”
Dressed in a dark suit and navy tie, Weinstein listened to the prosecution’s statement after arriving in court in a wheelchair, as he has done for his recent appearances.
His lawyers are expected to outline their case later on Wednesday.
Image: Steven Hirsch/ New York Post via AP/ pool
The opening statements got under way after the last jurors were finally picked on Tuesday, more than a week after the selection process began.
Prospective jurors were questioned about their backgrounds, life experiences and various other points that could potentially impact their ability to be fair and impartial about a case that has been so highly publicised. They have also been asked privately about their knowledge of the case and opinions on Weinstein.
Seven men and five women have been chosen to hear the trial.
Why is there a retrial?
In 2020, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being found guilty of charges of sexual assault in 2006 and rape in 2013, relating to two women.
But in April 2024, New York’s highest court overturned the convictions due to concerns of prejudicial testimony and that the judge in the original trial had made improper rulings.
Prosecutors announced a retrial last year and a separate charge concerning a third woman, who was not part of the original trial, has since been added to the case. She alleges the producer forced oral sex on her at a hotel in 2006.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies raping or sexually assaulting anyone.
Weinstein was also sentenced in February 2023 after being convicted of rape during a separate trial in LA – which means that even if the retrial ends in not guilty verdicts on all three counts, he will remain behind bars.