She may be an Oscar nominated actress, but apparently there's no way she could convincingly play a 55-year-old's girlfriend. That's what 37-year-old Maggie Gyllenhaal was recently told by a casting director. The Crazy Heart star revealed in an interview with The Wrap Magazine that she was denied a role opposite a man almost 20 years her senior because she was 'too old'.In fairness, Maggie Gylenhaal looks like she's going on 50 herself. I tend to suspect that this is less about sexism in Hollywood and more about how cutting her hair off makes a woman look like a frumpy, middle-aged housefrau.
'There are things that are really disappointing about being an actress in Hollywood that surprise me all the time,' she said 'I'm 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.'
To put it in context, According to this unnamed casting director, Maggie would not be a believable love interest of Val Kilmer, Kevin Spacey, Hugh Laurie, James Spader, Judd Nelson, Rupert Everett, Hugo Weaving or Jason Alexander - all of whom are 55 years old.
Let's face it, if you look at the actors listed, the only one whose girlfriend she could convincingly portray is Jason Alexander's, given that this is James Spader's actual girlfriend.
51 comments:
I think Family Guy put it best about her when it showed her arguing over who was less appealing as an actor/actress.
Correction: *arguing with her brother*.
On one hand you have the SJW press writing propaganda that pleases them and fools the moron Kardashian/'Murkans and on the other several billion other people who when they see a white woman on the stage or in the movie want to see a hottie.
Is she wearing a hair-piece?
I could not buy her as Bruce Wayne's love interest in the Dark Knight movie. Yeah to the average guy she might be pretty cute, but to a handsome billionaire who can get any woman he wants she'd be beneath notice.
Meh, maybe not so much beneath notice as not desirable for anything more than a quick lay, if that. And perhaps not even then.
Maggie Manjaw's Susan Boyle-meets-Moe Howard hair really brings out her utter asexuality. Funny that her brother is more feminine than she is. WTF went on in that gene pool? The only thing I remember her acting in was her role in Batman where she replaced that prettier and more believable scientologist fruit loop in the greatest example of miscasting a role in the history of ever.
Meh, maybe not so much beneath notice as not desirable for anything more than a quick lay, if that. And perhaps not even then.
Ye gods of chthonic darkness, what happened to her head?
That is a hard 37. Admittedly, I thought she was very bangable back when she played James Spader's crazy administrative assistant / love interest in Secretary (2002), but now she looks like Flo The Progressive Insurance girl after a some particularly intense chemo.
"I could not buy her as Bruce Wayne's love interest in the Dark Knight movie."
ABSOLUTELY true. And that is all the more annoying because the movie was so good in all other regards.
Heh, saw this on trending on Facebook list and was hoping you'd comment on it. Thing was, almost every supposedly outraged news article had an extremely unflattering photo with that haircut and wrinkles making her look like Judy Dench's ugly younger sister, so I'm pretty sure they were mostly schadenfreude clickbait for women.
Female actresses need to treat the world of Hollywood like any other woman needs to treat the world of marriage. She's going to be most popular before the age of 25. Between 25 and 30 she still has a decent chance at roles. At 30 to 35 they start to dwindle. And after 35, the age at which fertility and beauty hasten their slow decline into a swan dive off a cliff, there's not much left except for those who choose to be mothers (either off-screen or on). Gyllenhaal is the acting equivalent of a cougar.
That is a hard 37.
I just looked at the picture, and holy crap, you're not kidding. Raquel Welch is 74 and looks no older than her! The butch hair certainly doesn't help, but her face seriously reminds me of my ex-mother-in-law, who was in her 60s. What happened to all those Hollywood plastic surgeons?
They do hit hard sometimes. There have been two times that a woman around 35-40 came into my office and I thought, "Hmm, she has possibilities"; then I saw her less than six months later and was shocked by how much older she looked.
They're just being polite when they tell her she's too old. She's actually too ugly. Charlize Theron is 39 -- they'd cast her.
Just think, that "hard 37" is after a team of stylists worked on her for a red carpet appearance.
It's that same old issue here. Kim Kattrell did it too. They make a fortune when they are young and then whine and cry when they get older about how sexist Hollywood is. The same Hollywood that made them rich.
And they always talk about how accomplished they are later in their careers. Girls, being an actress isn't that hard. CHILDREN DO IT. You are totally replacable by better looking younger women who will accept less money for their big break.
@Owen,
Yikes! Excellent point.
'Charlize Theron is 39 -- they'd cast her.'
She chopped off her hair too. She looks ugly.
Whenever I hear actresses complaining about sexism or not getting roles, I think of how un-challenging their roles are and, more importantly, how little they challenge themselves with roles.
None of the men won an Oscar for their performance:
Robert Duvall The Apostle
Christian Bale The Machinist
Robert DiNiro Taxi Driver and/or The Deer Hunter
Peter Sellers Being There
Did another actor win deservedly? Yes. That’s how good male actors have to be. You can drop 60lbs, take on the mannerisms of a lunatic, build pity in the audience despite not being a particularly likeable character (Machinist) and still not get the top award for the year.
Just look at any year of the Oscars and compare the challenge of a role between male and female actors. You can’t tell me its because they can’t write big roles for women. A lot of the actresses just can’t/won’t do what their contemporary actors do when committing to a role. You don’t need dramatic weight loss/gain. Look at Sellers’ performance as Chauncy Gardner. He crafted that role to be unlike any other depiction on film, unlike any of his other roles, and sold it. Still, not good enough.
Let’s all pity some chick because her looks faded.
The only thing I remember her acting in was her role in Batman where she replaced that prettier and more believable scientologist fruit loop in the greatest example of miscasting a role in the history of ever.
@Paul
I don't find either Maggie Gyllenhaal or Katie Holmes to be that great looking, even in their primes.
Robert Duvall The Apostle
A quick look at Wikipedia shows he wrote the script himself and got it financed himself and directed it himself. When has any actress done something remotely like that and the result was halfway decent?
I've never seen this movie but it sounds interesting based on the synopsis so I'll have to check it out. I love Duvall.
It's that same old issue here. Kim Kattrell did it too. They make a fortune when they are young and then whine and cry when they get older about how sexist Hollywood is. The same Hollywood that made them rich.
Yeah, a local news anchorette up here complained a few years ago about being replaced as the prime time anchor by a younger woman. She said that it was unfair after nearly twenty years as the anchor for a woman in her mid 40's to be replace by a woman in her mid 20's...
Let's see, mid 40's minus 20 years, that means she was how old when she replaced the previous female anchor? Hmmmm, math is hard...
Frankly, I thought the female casting in the Bale Batman movies was sub-par. MG was the definite nadir however, making Katie Holmes look downright attractive. Maybe I missed her attractive phase but it was certainly some time ago.
Regarding Kim Kattrell, she was very hot in "Big Trouble in Little China". Years later for "Sex in the City" she looks the part of a woman that has slept around frequently for years. Women love her character because they think it is realistic that she is portrayed as riding the quality portion of the carousel (younger men, rich men, powerful men). Of course the truth is she wouldn't pull the young guys regularly without being a sugar momma, and the older men would be much more bland and hungry, no longer the men with options who were interested in her youth. She would be far less likely to be showered with gifts by Alphas, more likely drizzled on by Betas.
It's technology. HD is just so brutally unkind to females older than 25. The average female talking heads look ROUGH.
Wow, "hard 37" is an understatement. That's Adamantium Hard. Did the aforementioned team of red-carpet stylists look at her and say "Ah, screw it, we can't fix this." ?
Actresses look older than their age. They also play older than their age. An 18 year old can be mistaken for 25. A 37 year old might look 50, a young 50. On the other hand, Halle Berry is 48, but she can play 35. This depends on how hot they still look.
Maggie Gyllenhaal cannot play a convincing girlfriend. She is not a hottie.
Unrelated, but it occurred to me 7 months into my current LTR, and based on my last LTR that if you give a woman long enough, she will disqualify herself as potential wife material.
Owen and Dave W. both nailed it. If that's the best that "Hollywood's Finest" can do to put lipstick on a pig/polish a turd, then I shudder to think about what she looks like in her natural state. Nature will allow itself to be impeded by only so much.
Maggie had better hope that there will be a resurgent demand for casting in horror flicks.
Truly not sure how such an unattractive woman ended up in Hollywood to begin with. Google pictures of her when she was young....still was very ugly. She has a grandma face.
Truly not sure how such an unattractive woman ended up in Hollywood to begin with.
Her father is a director and her mother is from a family of "high-achieving New York Jews". Says it all.
Wow, Hollywood isn't fair?
Hollywood doesn't remember your past contributions?:
How is this even a...?
Look, I was never a big fan of Maggie, she isn't that far from being a brunette Gywenth Paltrow. She was handed her career by her father and thought that she would continue being a lead actress on the golden treadmill forever.
An actress who had to fight for chance would have had a better idea about when her run was over. Which in Maggie's case, was right after Christopher Nolan decided that killing off Rachel wouldn't have any fan blow back. He was right.
Maggie had a good ten years on screen but around 2010 she should have locked herself into a nice solid, long term TV gig.
Nope, she was a movie star. Nothing else would do.
Hollywood is Game writ large. Women hit their peak market value when they are way too young to plan for the future. Men hit theirs when they are too old to care anymore.
Yeah - I'm thinking about some of the grand old ladies in acting. They aren't trying to play hot young things - they've gone on the stage and done Shakespeare and "serious" acting instead of trying to keep doing the same old boy meets girl thing. Heck - it doesn't even have to be all that serious. Rooster Cogburn is a bit of a farce, but Katherine Hepburn also didn't have to pretend to be 20yrs younger in order to play opposite John Wayne.
"Look, I was never a big fan of Maggie, she isn't that far from being a brunette Gywenth Paltrow."
I assume you're speaking strictly in terms of personality here. On her best day, Maggie was never as good looking as GP is today.
OT, but relevant to the blog:
https://www.facebook.com/j1045/photos/a.10150821890098458.402255.144163993457/10152758255018458/?type=1&theater
Look, I was never a big fan of Maggie, she isn't that far from being a brunette Gywenth Paltrow.
Another talentless hack(ette) whose daddy (Bruce,Paltrow) was a Hollywood insider.
I'm really surprised that there aren't more career crossovers between Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Both are populated in the main by talentless, narcissistic, sociopathic lowlifes who owe their positions to family connections, produce not only nothing useful or beneficial, but actually toxic; are handed "Get Out of Jail Free" passes after committing crimes that would get us ordinary peon locked up for years, and have a sense of arrogant entitlement unmatched by anyone else in the universe.
I could not buy her as Bruce Wayne's love interest in the Dark Knight movie. Yeah to the average guy she might be pretty cute, but to a handsome billionaire who can get any woman he wants she'd be beneath notice.
That's the key. She's not too old to be the girlfriend of a 55 year old guy selling Toyotas. But she's far too old for a very successful man of the same age.
It's like a whole generation of mothers forgot to explain the facts of life to their daughters. In the end, maybe that's what feminism is in a nutshell.
Actresses look older than their age. They also play older than their age. An 18 year old can be mistaken for 25. A 37 year old might look 50, a young 50.
The young 50 is the crucial part. 50 year old women want to think they look like a 37 year old. Or younger.
I have a niece who is a catalog model. She's in her late 20's and figures she only has a few more years shelf life. But she says the work right now is really steady because she's in high demand for clothes marketed to women in their late 30's and 40's. She's old enough that she doesn't look like the Fresh-Faced Young Thang anymore, but she's young enough to still be very good looking. So they put her in a high-waisted full coverage two piece with a big floppy hat and convince the 40 year olds they can pull off that look at the beach this year too.
She looks terrible in that picture. Half the problem is that she's cut her hair off. The other half is dietary. She's always had the skinny-fat vegetarian thing going on, but that's not aging well. Also, the lack of quality animal fats and proteins is showing in her skin and causing it to prematurely age.
Here's the real thing, though: she was cute enough in her prime. But as she is now, I could run down to the local park tomorrow and pick out a half dozen soccer moms that are more attractive than she is. With that man replacements to choose from, why on earth would anybody in Hollywood choose her? I mean, there's a level at which I can actually get the unrealistic body image thing (although it definitely cuts both ways). But I'm also not interested in spending two hours watching a movie starring people less attractive than the people around me in the theater. What's the point of escapist fiction if I can't escape?
Gunnar von Cowtown said...
she looks like Flo The Progressive Insurance girl after a some particularly intense chemo.
I think Flo would look better even after Chemo.
This girl looks like post wall barf, she's not even five out of ten.
Actresses complaining about boring roles ar3 delusional. They didnt understand they were eanted mostly for their looks when they were young and they dont understand that women arent interesting. Even to other women. Especially to other women.
Ten years ago she was really attractive: great smile, nice eyes, pretty smile.
Now she looks like a middle aged Obama voter.
What are you talking about, she doesn't look older than 37. She's just not hot (the hair doesn't help).
I'm sorry Miss, your "Young White Woman Privilege" credit card has been declined. You're going to have to pay in cash from now on.
What are you talking about, she doesn't look older than 37. She's just not hot (the hair doesn't help).
My wife is ten years older than Maggie but if you saw them together you'd think my wife was the younger one. At least based on that picture.
She was never that attractive...even in her prime. Donnie Darko anyone?
The only role she can hope for now is Main Character's Spinster Aunt.
I'll try again. Gyllenhaal should not be playing anyone who is supposed to be attractive.
However, the James Spader thing is not quite fair as he is trading on his status as a well-known actor to pull that woman.
We could do the same thing with Gyllenhaal. She is married to a 44 year old actor, Peter Sarsgaard, who seems fairly handsome to me.
Wait... that person in the "James Spader's actual girlfriend" link is supposed to be an attractive female?
Sheesh....
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