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‘Don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime’: Michelle Yeoh’s clarion call against Hollywood’s ageism is much needed

The 60-year-old Oscar-winner is proving that roles and opportunities don’t dry up once a woman hits her 50s, 60s and beyond

Michelle Yeoh attends the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar party on Sunday. (Photo by Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)

Actress Olivia Wilde was considered 'too old' at 28 (as pictured) to play Leonardo Di Caprio's wife in 'The Wolf of Wall Street'. (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)

Michelle Yeoh, winner of the Best Actress in a Leading Role award for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Jamie Lee Curtis, winner of Best Actress in a Supporting Role award for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ in the press room during the 95th Annual Academy Awards. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

Michelle Yeoh attends the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar party on Sunday. (Photo by Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)

Actress Olivia Wilde was considered 'too old' at 28 (as pictured) to play Leonardo Di Caprio's wife in 'The Wolf of Wall Street'. (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)

Michelle Yeoh, winner of the Best Actress in a Leading Role award for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Jamie Lee Curtis, winner of Best Actress in a Supporting Role award for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ in the press room during the 95th Annual Academy Awards. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

Michelle Yeoh attends the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar party on Sunday. (Photo by Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)

Kirsty Blake Knox Twitter Email

March 14 2023 11:11 AM

For years, the minute Hollywood actresses hit a ‘certain age’, the roles would become lighter on the ground.

Last year’s ‘It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World’ study from San Diego University shows that the percentage of female characters on screen in their 40s (18pc) was significantly lower than those in their 30s (34pc).

The average age of actresses winning Oscars is 39 — 10 years younger than male actors.

Female actresses have spoken about this inequality. Olivia Wilde said she was dismissed as ‘too old’ to play Leonardo DiCaprio’s wife in 2013’s The Wolf Of Wall Street — she was 28 at the time.

Actress Olivia Wilde was considered 'too old' at 28 (as pictured) to play Leonardo Di Caprio's wife in 'The Wolf of Wall Street'. (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)

When she turned 35, Emma Thompson believed producers would ‘have to exhume somebody to play my leading man’. Multiple Oscar winner Meryl Streep said that when she turned 40, she thought ‘each movie would be my last’.

The idea that women stop being of value once they hit their forties or become middle-aged has been prevalent for decades.

It was wonderfully lampooned in the Inside Amy Schumer sketch show. Schumer accidentally stumbles across Patricia Arquette, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Tina Fey celebrating Julia’s ‘Last F**kable Day’ as an actress. “In every actress’s life you reach the point where the media decides you are not believably f**kable anymore,” she explains.

They cite Sally Field going from playing Tom Hanks’s lover in Punchline to playing his mother in Forrest Gump 10 years later.

Of course, this notion of a woman having a best-before shelf life is not confined to acting.

Earlier this year, CNN host Don Lemon caused outrage when he said Republican candidate Nikki Haley (51) was ‘not in her prime’.

“A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s,” he told his co-anchors before adding; “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying what the facts are.”

Deep breaths, everyone.

So when Michelle Yeoh (60) picked up her Best Actress Oscar on Sunday, she issued a call telling those watching; “Ladies, don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime. Never give up.”

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It follows on from the sentiment of her Golden Globes speech when she told the audience; “I turned 60 last year — and I think all of you women understand this: as the days, years, numbers get bigger, the opportunities get smaller as well.”

We live in a youth-obsessed society; everyone is telling us to stay looking as young as humanly possible, and billionaires are wasting millions of dollars trying to live forever (when they’re not building mega-yachts and trying to go to the moon).

Within that context, it’s nice when someone points out how utterly bananas and limiting all of that is. And how your life doesn’t stop being rewarding, and fun, and glitzy, and sexy once you are over 40/50/60.

It also hopefully indicates a shift in Hollywood and that women in their 50s, 60s and beyond are getting bigger and better roles.

This awards season, women playing roles over 39 have been far more visible; Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis (64), Angela Bassett (64). There was the Jennifer Coolidge (61) Renaissance, dubbed the ‘Jenaissance’ by Vogue, thanks to Mike White’s The White Lotus.

And that’s a good thing — for them and us.

Last year in The Atlantic, Helen Lewis wrote about the benefit of women getting these parts.

“It is showing the rest of us what we’ve been missing,” she wrote. “Stories that capture the fullness of women’s lives.”

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‘Don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime’: Michelle Yeoh’s clarion call against Hollywood’s ageism is much needed

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