Davis is a force of nature. She achieved the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) entirely in her 50s. Her physically demanding role in The Woman King required training that would exhaust a 20-year-old.
We are seeing a surge of female directors over 50—Greta Gerwig is the outlier, but look to Kelly Reichardt (60), Sofia Coppola (53), and Ava DuVernay (52). When women direct, they cast older women. Dyanna Lauren - Mr. Too Big -MilfsLikeItBig- -2...
The most interesting roles are now written for women who have lived. The audience is tired of the virgin/whore dichotomy; they want the messy, the complicated, the real. They want to see the widow who buys a motorcycle, the grandmother who falls in love, the CEO who cries in her car, and the action hero with a hysterectomy. Davis is a force of nature
Mature women in entertainment and cinema have moved from the edge of the frame to the center of the screen. And if the box office returns and the Oscar nominations are any indication, they are not leaving anytime soon. We are seeing a surge of female directors
While she was always working, her roles in Mamma Mia! and The Devil Wears Prada (at 57) proved that a woman over 50 could be the absolute center of a cultural phenomenon, not the side note.
In the early 2000s, shows like The Sopranos (Edie Falco) and Six Feet Under (Frances Conroy) demonstrated that audiences craved the complexity of older female psychology. But the true detonation happened in 2017 with the release of The Wife , starring Glenn Close, and the streaming phenomenon Grace and Frankie .
From Barbarella to Grace and Frankie , Fonda has redefined retirement. She openly discusses how her career exploded after 60 because she stopped caring about being "beautiful" and started caring about being "true."