Does the Oscars still have a female ageing issue in 2024? Why Hollywood might finally be turning a corner
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.
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.
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’
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.
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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’
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.”
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.
The novel has survived the industrial revolution, radio, television, and the internet. Now it’s facing artificial intelligence – and novelists are worried.
Half (51%) fear that they will be replaced by AI entirely, according to a new survey, even though for the most part they don’t use the technology themselves.
More immediately, 85% say they think their future income will be negatively impacted by AI, and 39% claim their finances have already taken a hit.
Tracy Chevalier, the bestselling author of Girl With A Pearl Earring and The Glassmaker, shares that concern.
“I worry that a book industry driven mainly by profit will be tempted to use AI more and more to generate books,” she said in response to the survey.
“If it is cheaper to produce novels using AI (no advance or royalties to pay to authors, quicker production, retainment of copyright), publishers will almost inevitably choose to publish them.
“And if they are priced cheaper than ‘human made’ books, readers are likely to buy them, the way we buy machine-made jumpers rather than the more expensive hand-knitted ones.”
Chevalier, author of the book Girl With A Pearl Earring, with the painting of the same name. Pic: AP
Why authors are so worried
The University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy asked 258 published novelists and 74 industry insiders how AI is viewed and used in the world of British fiction.
Alongside existential fears about the wholesale replacement of the novel, many authors reported a loss of income from AI, which they attributed to “competition from AI-generated books and the loss of jobs which provide supplementary streams of income, such as copywriting”.
Some respondents reported finding “rip-off AI-generated imitations” of their own books, as well books “written under their name which they haven’t produced”.
Last year, the Authors Guild warned that “the growing access to AI is driving a new surge of low-quality sham ‘books’ on Amazon”, which has limited the number of publications per day on its Kindle self-publishing platform to combat the influx of AI-generated books.
The median income for a novelist is currently £7,000 and many make ends meet by doing related work, such as audiobook narration, copywriting or ghost-writing.
Read more: The author embracing AI to help write novels
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Could the AI bubble burst?
These tasks, authors feared, were already being supplanted by AI, although little evidence was provided for this claim, which was not possible to verify independently.
Copyright was also a big concern, with 59% of novelists reporting that they knew their work had been used to train AI models.
Of these, 99% said they did not give permission and 100% said they were not remunerated for this use.
Earlier this year, AI firm Anthropic agreed to pay authors $1.5bn (£1.2bn) to settle a lawsuit which claimed the company stole their work.
The judge in the US court case ruled that Anthropic had downloaded more than seven million digital copies of books it “knew had been pirated” and ordered the firm to pay authors compensation.
However, the judge sided with Anthropic over the question of copyright, saying that the AI model was doing something akin to when a human reads a book to inspire new work, rather than simply copying.
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Most novelists – 67% – never used it for creative work, although a few said they found it very useful for speeding up drafting or editing.
One case study featured in the report is Lizbeth Crawford, a novelist in multiple genres, including fantasy and romance. She describes working with AI as a writing partner, using it to spot plot holes and trim adjectives.
“Lizbeth used to write about one novel per year, but now she can do three per year, and her target is five,” notes the author of the report, Dr Clementine Collett.
Is there a role for government?
Despite this, the report’s foreword urges the government to slow down the spread of AI by strengthening copyright law to protect authors and other creatives.
The government has proposed making an exception to UK copyright law for “text and data mining”, which might make authors and other copyright holders opt out to stop their work being used to train AI models.
“That approach prioritises access to data for the world’s technology companies at the cost to the UK’s own creative industries,” writes Professor Gina Neff, executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.
“It is both bad economics and a betrayal of the very cultural assets of British soft power.”
A government spokesperson said: “Throughout this process we have, and always will, put the interests of the UK’s citizens and businesses first.
“We’ve always been clear on the need to work with both the creative industries and AI sector to drive AI innovation and ensure robust protections for creators.
“We are bringing together both British and global companies, alongside voices beyond the AI and creative sectors, to ensure we can capture the broadest possible range of expert views as we consider next steps.”
Entertainment
Princess of Wales says her children were ‘very sad’ to miss Paddington at Royal Variety Performance
The Princess of Wales has admitted her children were “very sad” to miss the Royal Variety Performance in London, which she and the Prince of Wales attended.
Prince William and Kate made their first appearance at the event since her recovery from cancer.
Wednesday’s red carpet show at the Royal Albert Hall was headlined by the cast of Paddington The Musical.
After arriving and being presented with posies by nine-year-old twins Emelia and Olivia Edwards, the family of staff at a care home for entertainment industry workers, Kate asked if they were fans of Paddington Bear.
The Princess of Wales meets Emelia and Olivia Edwards. Pic: PA
The princess, wearing a green velvet gown, then told the girls that her children were “very sad” not to attend the show and added she had to tell them children were not allowed to go.
“My kiddies were very sad, we’re going to have to keep it a big secret that I saw you guys,” she said.
“They were very sad not to be joining us.”
It is the sixth time William and Kate have attended the annual charity event.
When Olivia told the prince, wearing a tuxedo, her favourite singer was Billie Eilish, he replied she had good taste.
He said: “It’s very nice to see you both. You’re very smiley, you two.”
The royals were also greeted on the red carpet by ITV board members and representatives from the Royal Variety Charity, of which the King is the royal patron.
Pics: PA
The Paddington cast were set to take to the stage on Wednesday evening, while pop star Jessie J and Grammy award-winning singer Laufey were also expected to perform.
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Jessie J attends the Royal Variety Performance. Pic: PA
Laufey at the event in London. Pic: PA
Held annually, the Royal Variety Performance was first staged in 1912 for King George V and Queen Mary in support of the charity, which helps those working in the entertainment industry.
Ahead of the show, its executive producer Giles Cooper said the charity was “thrilled” the prince and princess would “once again attend the Royal Variety Performance”.
Mr Cooper, also chairman of the charity, added: “This annual great British institution, viewed by a worldwide TV audience of over 150 million, continues to be a crucial fundraising event supporting people in all areas of performance, either on or off stage.
“In this pressurised world of working in the entertainment industry, our mental health initiative, started in 2024, has been a lifeline for many who are experiencing issues such as anxiety, depression or addiction.”
Pics: PA
On Tuesday, the princess called on businesses to value “time and tenderness just as much as productivity and success” in her first speech since she was diagnosed with cancer at the start of 2024.
Speaking at the Future Workforce Summit, Kate told 80 business leaders: “Every one of you interacts with your own environment; a home, a family, a business, a workforce, a community.
“These are the ecosystems that you yourselves help to weave. Imagine a world where each of these environments were built on valuing time and tenderness just as much as productivity and success.
“As business leaders, you will face the daily challenge of finding the balance between profitability and having a positive impact. But the two are not, and should not be incompatible.”
Entertainment
Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sells for £180m at auction, a record for modern art
A painting that helped save the life of its Jewish subject during the Holocaust has become the most expensive piece of modern art and the second most expensive painting ever sold at auction.
The Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, was bought for $236.4m (£180m) by an unnamed buyer after a 20-minute bidding war at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday.
Its sale price beat the previous record for 20th-century art set by Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, a portrait of Marilyn Monroe bought for $195m (£148m) in 2022.
Shot Sage Blue Marilyn by Andy Warhol. Pic: Associated Press
The most expensive painting ever sold at auction was Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which fetched $450m (£342m) in 2017, Christie’s said on its website.
Sotheby’s said on X the price for the Klimt was “astonishing”, making the piece “the most valuable work of modern art ever sold at auction”.
The portrait, which Klimt worked on between 1914 and 1916, depicts the daughter of one of Vienna’s wealthiest families wearing an East Asian emperor’s cloak.
Evaded fire and Nazi looters
Measuring 1.8m (6ft), the colourful piece, which was completed in 1916, illustrates the Lederer family’s life of luxury before Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938.
It was kept separate from other Klimt paintings that burned in a fire at an Austrian castle.
It also escaped being looted by the Nazis, who plundered the Lederer art collection.
They left only the family portraits, which they held to be “too Jewish” to be worth stealing, according to the National Gallery of Canada, where the painting was previously on loan.
Father lie saved her life
To save her own life, Elisabeth Lederer made up a story that Klimt, who was not Jewish and died in 1918, was her father.
It helped that the artist spent years working meticulously on her portrait.
She convinced the Nazis to give her a document stating that she descended from Klimt, which allowed her to live safely in Vienna until her death from illness in 1944.
The painting, which is one of two full-length portraits by the Austrian artist that remain privately owned, was part of the collection of billionaire Leonard A Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire, who died this year.
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Five Klimt pieces from Lauder’s collection sold at the auction for a total of $392m (£298m), which also included pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch, Sotheby’s said.
An 18-carat-gold toilet by Maurizio Cattelan – the provocative Italian artist known for taping a banana to a wall – sold for a reported $12.1m (£9.2m).
The fully-functioning toilet, one of two he created in 2016 satirising superwealth, was stolen while on display at Blenheim Palace, the country manor where Winston Churchill was born, in 2019.
Two men were convicted of the theft, but it’s unclear what they did with the loo.
Investigators believe it was likely broken up and melted down.
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