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Just three words gloriously delivered by Michelle Yeoh at this year’s Golden Globes served to endorse her years. These three: 'Shut up, please.' Accompanied by a sharp head-turn to the pianist encouraging her exit from the stage, mid-acceptance speech, to show she was not messing around.
Only a woman of a certain age – 60 in Yeoh’s case – would have the confidence, poise, and nerve to handle the dreaded play-off so directly. No apologies; no deferential head-nod, eyes cast downward; no rushed wrap-up before running off.
She was right to savour the moment. An actor who, having worked in film for forty years, only just received her first Golden Globes nomination (for Best Actress - Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy category for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once). The chances of a win happening as she hit her seventh decade were, as Yeoh acknowledged, slim.
'I think all of you women understand this,' she said from the stage. 'As the days, the years, the numbers get bigger, it seems like the opportunities get smaller.'
Yeoh wasn’t the only older women to win that night. Angela Bassett (64) and Jennifer Coolidge (61) also triumphed in their categories.
This wasn’t a one-night thing either: the sheer number of nominations and wins elsewhere in awards season have seen 2023 hailed as the year that actresses in mid-life and beyond are finally getting their due.
The proof: women over 40 make up four of the five nominations for Best Actress at the Oscars and five of the six BAFTA Leading Actress and Supporting Actress nominees. There are two over-sixties in the Oscars Best Supporting Category too.
Why does this matter? Where do we begin... Since the dawn of time (or at least cinema), there have been two roles for women, depending on their age: hottie or hag. They can play the impossibly sexy love interest until they’re 27. OK, 30 at a push. And then once they’re deemed ‘old’, it’s nanas and witches all the way.
Just ask Meryl Streep, who said of hitting 40 (forty!): 'I was offered three witches in one year and it was sending me a signal.' Yeah, that signal was get in the pointy hat or get out of (tinsel) town.
So yeah, Hollywood has traditionally never known what to do with women over 40. And certainly not when it comes to rich, dynamic, textured characters that don’t include a twin-set and purple rinse. Which explains the lack of roles being written, women being cast, performances being nailed, and awards being won.
Just as with any group who don’t see themselves represented, there is a cost to this. How can your experiences, your existence, matter when it’s not even important enough to be brought to life on what should be the most democratic space for stories: the cinema screen.
And what of society’s perceptions that are, in part, shaped by the culture they consume. Of how they, we, see women of a certain age. Of the judgement cast upon greying hair and softening middles, of the creases dancing on our skin. The characterisation of these women as weak, tired, and peripheral, always man and life adjacent.
It’s not surprising that it feels like a race to achieve in our opening decades, because it all disappears in our second and third acts, right? Crucially, this year’s winning crop have proven that success can come at any age, after years of graft, when you’ve probably been told it’s all over.
'I had such big dreams and expectations as a younger person,' said Jennifer Coolidge at the Globes, 'But what happened was they get sort of fizzled by life or whatever.'
Or whatever. We all know the specifics that lie in that ‘whatever’: the lack of opportunity, of visibility, of belief in us as interesting human beings.
But things are better now, right, thirty-three years on from Meryl Streep and those witch offers? This weekend is certainly set to cement the sense that the industry’s changed, with the headlines from the BAFTAs likely to be dominated by older women's wins.
And it does seem remarkable, miraculous even. Especially when statistics (from the University of Southern California) revealed that as recently as 2019, only three of the top 100 movies featured a woman over 45 in a lead or supporting role. From that abomination to today.
So, better now? Yes, and no. Just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, one awards season doesn’t make an equitable industry for older women.
We must look beyond acting. To writing, directing and to the craft categories - to those making films and telling stories. What their erasure says about whose lives we find worthy of study and observation; whose work is worthy of recognition.
The Oscars nominated zero women, of any age, in Original Screenplay, Visual Effects, Original Score and, perhaps most egregiously, in Best Director. This was in some way corrected by the BAFTAs nominating 53-year-old Gina Prince-Bythewood for Director, but her film The Woman King was completely shut out of the biggest industry awards on the planet.
This is where intersection beyond age and gender is vital. None of the Oscars' Best Actress nominees were Black women, in a year that both Viola Davis (57) and Danielle Deadwyler (40) were lauded and nominated elsewhere. So, while four out of five older women might be something to celebrate, those celebrations should be tempered until everyone is represented. For this is where Hollywood is still playing catch-up (and then some).
Until it does catch up, I suggest we heed the words of Gina Prince-Bythewood, reacting to her Academy Awards snub: 'I’m going to keep grinding and doing work that I believe in. I’m never taking my foot off the gas.' And Jennifer Coolidge, who quite simply said, 'It’s not over until you’re dead.'
