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Topic: The plight of aging actresses (Read 230 times)

Rhune
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The plight of aging actresses
« on: Aug 25^th, 2003, 4:34pm »

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The plight of aging actresses
Monday, August 25, 2003 Posted: 2:07 PM EDT (1807 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- When did you last see Hollywood actresses on TV talking -- as opposed to talking something up?

You know, gushing about their marvelous director or wonderful co-star in their latest project, rather than really talking -- up close, with their pores and crow's-feet revealed, smoking and sipping wine and grousing about life.

Sexist Hollywood dealmakers, the pain of being away from their kids, the fear that at age 30 the end is near -- there's all that and more in "Searching for Debra Winger" (airing on various Showtime channels Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday), Rosanna Arquette's revealing, melancholy and sometimes painfully funny exploration of the Hollywood female afterlife.

Watching the rich cavalcade of women who pass by Arquette's lens -- Laura Dern, Teri Garr, Whoopi Goldberg, Melanie Griffith, Daryl Hannah, Holly Hunter, Diane Lane, Meg Ryan, Sharon Stone, Tracey Ullman, JoBeth Williams, Alfre Woodard and finally Debra Winger -- a middle-aged viewer can't help wondering: Where have they all gone? How come we don't see more of these brainy, beautiful women at the cineplex?

Roger Ebert offers the dispiriting answer: "The whole American movie industry is skewing toward the teenage male demographic," and that group has "lost interest in sex altogether."

What teenage boys want in a woman is "somebody really tough who's going to kill everyone," the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic says, and gestures to a larger-than-life poster of Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in the new "Tomb Raider" movie.

Ebert is the only male with a sustained speaking part in Arquette's 100-minute film. The rest is given over to the likes of Daryl Hannah, 42, describing people's shock that she would take the role of a mother of a teenager; Theresa Russell, 46; Vanessa Redgrave, 66; Jane Fonda, 65; Charlotte Rampling, 57; and Catherine O'Hara, 49.

'These guys that can't get a girlfriend in high school'

A sisterly atmosphere carries the film through its weakest patches and delivers such memorable moments as Fonda's spellbinding description of walking from dressing room to set to shoot a big scene, almost paralyzed with fear that she will freeze up and fail. It sounds like the walk to the gas chamber.

The high point of the movie comes when some of the women join 44-year-old Arquette for lunch and start dishing. It's not pretty; some of it isn't printable.

The fly-on-the-wall viewer hears Samantha Mathis, 33, describing a "Revenge of the Nerds syndrome" among Hollywood executives -- "These guys that can't get a girlfriend in high school ... and suddenly they're, like, running these studios."

Patricia Arquette, Rosanna's 35-year-old sister, recalls the humiliation of having to shoot a nude scene while an executive she detests is on the set. Adrienne Shelly, 36, tells how her agent called to say she had a shot at a part and should show up for a casting session looking sexually available. (Actually, the adjective the agent used is unprintable.)

Martha Plimpton, at 32 one of the youngest participants, asks: "Intelligence, talent, imagination, bravery, skill -- when you eliminate all of those things, what have you got?" Ally Sheedy, 41, provides the answer: that unprintable word again.

Julia Ormond, 38, and Tracy Ullmann, 43, offer a humorous English perspective -- Ullmann mimicking the Botox look and Ormond pulling her skin back to parody a facelift.

Winger not unhappy to be out
Which brings us to Winger, the three-time Academy Award nominee and star of "Urban Cowboy" and "Terms of Endearment" who became something of a J.D. Salinger by turning her back on Hollywood and disappearing six years ago.

Sitting on her lawn by a river and a railway track, she exudes a matronly grace. Her unlifted face looks more lived-in. The first years of retirement were tough, she acknowledges. "I felt half-dead. ... If you're doing housework it's pretty hard to be passionate about it."

But she isn't sorry to be out of a Hollywood which suggested she take water retention pills because in the rushes of "An Officer and a Gentleman" she looked "a little bloated."

At 48, she insists she hasn't quit movies entirely and is open to offers, but the roles she wants "don't exist for me at this age."

Well, not quite. Even as she was being interviewed on her lawn, Winger was co-starring with her husband, Arliss Howard, in a small movie drama called "Big Bad Love."

And some of those interviewed think age is making them better actresses.

Gwyneth Paltrow feels "that my whole career is ahead of me in terms of who I will become as an actress ... I feel like I haven't done anything yet."

That's a 30-year-old Oscar winner talking.

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Rhune
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Re: The plight of aging actresses
« Reply #1 on: Aug 25^th, 2003, 4:40pm »

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I wandered in to the last half of this a couple nights ago. It was actually really interesting to watch. I'll admit my husband wasn't all that interested in it Wink

but I thought it was fascinating. Rosanna Arquette talked about how there's this age for women where you really don't see them in films anymore, becuase they are too old to play young and perky breasted and not old enough yet to play the mother of someone else young and perky breasted, and that there are just basically no roles written for this age group of women to speak of. The men who are stars continue to get parts at this age, but they are still cast against younger and perkier breasted women, not women their own age. I never much thought about that before, but really that's pretty true...There are a lot of actresses in this that I thought "hey whatever happened to them?" and they pretty much all fall into that catagory...they didn't really go away, they were written out...

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MzWings
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Re: The plight of aging actresses
« Reply #2 on: Aug 25^th, 2003, 4:50pm »

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Dadburnitall! I've seen several clips but missed the show? Angry

*kicks wall*

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