Or at all, because the hype and reception of these actresses is so different from how it’s been historically. “Hollywood, since its inception, has been obsessed with youth and beauty when it comes to women,” says Alicia Malone, a host on Turner Classic Movies who has written three books about women in film. “And we’ve routinely seen great actresses be cast out of Hollywood once they turned 40.” Often, actresses over the age of 40 have been relegated to desexualized side characters or overlooked, one-dimensional mothers. In 2017, at the age of 50, Nicole Kidman played then-41-year-old Alexander Skarsgard’s older wife in HBO’s Big Little Lies, a series produced by Kidman and co-star Reese Witherspoon. By 2022’s The Northman, a film produced by men and directed by Robert Eggers, Kidman, now 55, played his mother. Or they’re just “gruesome monstrous roles,” Malone says. Like witches — literally. When Meryl Streep turned 40, she was offered the role of a witch three times in the span of a year.
