Sandra Bullock has two movies coming out this year: The Proposal, where she’s a well-to-do Canadian ad-exec in New York about to be deported unless she gets married and All About Steve where she’s an odd-ball crossword puzzle editor who obsesses over a CNN camera man. What’s notable about these two movies is that Bullock, who’s just a month shy of her 45th birthday, is playing the rom-com role usually reserved for women fifteen to twenty years her junior.
Judging by the trailers the issue of her age isn’t brought up except for the usual “I want grandkids/you’re post-pubescent you should be married already” braying from parental figures that applies regardless of the lead’s actual age. In this case, however, the issue that Bullock might not even be able to have kids anymore seems to not come up. This is in an era where Cameron Diaz (eight years Bullock’s junior) is playing a woman who has teenage children (My Sister’s Keeper) and Jennifer Aniston (five years Bullock’s junior) is playing a desperate 40-year-old who is trying to get pregnant by any means possible before it’s too late (Baster).
What are we seeing here? Is it a turn on of the regular Hollywood barriers that don’t allow women of a certain age into many roles, a Hollywood power player getting roles she doesn’t really deserve because of behind the camera clout or just a woman using the fact that she looks younger than she actually is to her advantage? I’m not really sure.
(P.S. I’m perfectly aware that men of the same age face no such bias against working in these types of movies. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that the double standard isn’t sexist.)
You have a good point. As someone in these romcom’s demo (a chick who watches these chick flicks) I’ve got to say I never gave this much thought.I wouldn’t have guessed Sandra Bullock was 45, she doesn’t look it… Also, I find her too adorable not to be the leading lady. Cameron Diaz, as you mention, is younger and playing a mom-figure. My thoughts when I saw the trailer were: What. The. Fuck?
Cameron Diaz certainly doesn’t look old enough for this role. She seems a very odd fit for it. Would I put Sandra Bullock there instead and trade them places? No way! Sandra pulls off romcoms a lot better, IMO.
I don’t think it has as much to do with Hollywood barriers than it does with one simple question: if not Sandra Bullock because she’s “too old”, than who? Megan Fox? Please. She couldn’t hack it in anything tougher than a high school flick. She may be a woman for the men, but Sandra has an appeal for both genders.
So then who? Who is a 20 something actress who can pull this off? We see Katherine Heigl doing a good job, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone of Sandra Bullock or Meg Ryan character out there.
And why aren’t men ever too old? Lame.
To answer the last part of your post first: Why aren’t men ever too old? In my opinion 10 parts sexism and 1 part biology. Ignoring the sexism, the biology is simply that at 45 it would be pretty hard to have kids and the implicit transaction of a romcom is that the two leads are going to get married and have kids. In fact if Sandra Bullock had already started menopause it would be an entirely healthy age for that to happen (if maybe a touch early). So there’s that.
Megan Fox can’t do romcoms because she looks too much like a stripper, but off the top of my head here are a bunch of Hollywood actresses who do romcoms: Katherine Heigl, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson, Jennifer Garner, Elizabeth Mitchell, Jessica Beil.
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