Emma Thompson
Emma says it’s always been a problem for slightly older actresses to land work: “The age thing is insane. It was ever thus. I remember saying years and years ago, when I was 35, that they’d have to exhume somebody to play my leading man … Nothing’s changed in that regard. If anything, it’s got worse….I remember somebody saying to me that I was too old for Hugh Grant, who’s like a year younger than me, in Sense and Sensibility. I said, ‘Do you want to go take a flying leap?’”
Jessica Lange
Jessica is glad people have started to notice the strange age differences between male and female on-screen romances: “When I was in my thirties I wasn’t fascinated by 70-year-old men. But then, I didn’t have to be. It’s classic Hollywood. I’m glad the media has picked up on it, but it’s certainly not a new phenomenon. I think a lot of it is fear of mortality. One’s mortality, one’s youth and virility … now they have Viagra, they’re humping away on their deathbeds. Hollywood is a perfect expansion of that idea that permeates our society.”
