10 hours Ago
LOS ANGELES, Feb 15 — From Renée Zellweger and Demi Moore to Nicole Kidman and Pamela Anderson, many headline female stars of the 1990s and 2000s are making a remarkable comeback on the silver screen. And they aren’t just taking on any old roles. They’re playing parts that see them embracing and asserting their age, shaking up norms and embodying a Hollywood revival that’s redefining the place of midlife women in the movies.
These are deep, complex roles, asserting the experience and life choices of older women. More than 20 years after the last Bridget Jones film, Renée Zellweger is back in the role of cinema’s most famous singleton. In Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy , released in the US on streaming service Peacock on February 13, the actress steps back into her role as the endearing heroine, still searching for the perfect love match after the death of Mark Darcy.
Now 52 and the mother of two children, Bridget Jones explores new love dynamics, enjoying relationships with men younger than herself. Renée Zellweger is not the only female star currently playing a mature woman seduced by a younger man. In the erotic thriller Baby Girl , Nicole Kidman takes on a similar role.
She plays an influential businesswoman dissatisfied with her sex life with her husband, despite her comfortable lifestyle. She finds solace in her young intern, with whom she begins a sordid affair that jeopardises her personal and professional lives. Halina Reijn’s movie explores the sexuality of mature women, and their disappointments when it comes to their most carnal desires, all with no taboos.
While Hollywood has often portrayed love stories between men and younger women, a new trend now seems to be turning the tables, with scenarios that reverse this dynamic. Now it’s mature women who are reclaiming their power and freedom, whether sexual or otherwise. In Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door , out in January, Tilda Swinton plays a woman with cancer, wishing to end her life to avoid suffering.
The drama looks back on her brilliant career as a photojournalist, without toning down her role as a mother with little involvement in her own daughter’s life. The Spanish filmmaker’s feature film gives pride of place to women and their life choices, even when it to comes to death. It gives full control back to women, without confining them to the role of mother.
Coralie Fargeat’s movie The Substance denounces the shackles of a society that values youth over experience. Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a TV star who hosts a fitness show. Now “too old” for television, this fading star uses “a substance” to create a younger version of herself: Sue, played by Margaret Qualley.
But this obsession with preserving her youthfulness and gaining the validation and love of others ultimately leads to her downfall. The return of actresses in their 50s and 60s marks a major turning point in Hollywood. They are back in the spotlight, and in leading roles — no longer trying to hide their age, but fully embracing it.
They are imposing a new vision of femininity and maturity on an industry which, for a long time, preferred to leave women on the shelf after the age of 40. Nicole Kidman won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her role in Baby Girl at the Venice Film Festival in 2024, while Demi Moore won the first Golden Globe of her career, taking Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her performance in The Substance . She was also nominated for an Oscar for the role.
Meanwhile, the iconic star of the Baywatch TV show, Pamela Anderson, now 57, chooses to go makeup-free for interviews and public appearances. It’s a move aimed at redefining beauty standards and freeing herself from the norms and expectations imposed by Hollywood. Pamela Anderson currently stars in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl about a dancer who sees the show in which she’s starred for 30 years suddenly close, and who must find a way to reinvent herself in spite of her age.
The movie is out now in the US. — ETX Studio.
