There is also the persistent "beauty paradox." Mature actresses are expected to look "good for their age"—a phrase that still implies that aging is a problem to be managed rather than a natural process to be expressed. True progress will be when a 60-year-old actress can play a homeless addict (like Michelle Pfeiffer in Where Is Kyra? ) or a grieving, unglamorous widow without the press first asking, "How does she stay so fit?"
Historically, actresses over 45 faced a desert of archetypes: the nagging wife, the mystical grandma, or the brittle villain. The industry treated aging as a disease to be hidden with fillers or comic relief. Georgie Lyall Pounding The Problem Son - MilfsL...