Mirror Mirror On The Wall, Who's The Fairest Of Them All? A Man Named Chris And a Talking Animal, That’s What

The film industry would sooner choose to feature a man named Chris or a talking animal as the lead character of a movie before they consider an older woman (gasp!) for the same, a new study has revealed. Age is just a number, they say. Unfortunately, for a woman working in the cut-throat industry of showbiz and films, it's not. The new study conducted by the United Kingdom’s “Age Without Limits” campaign has highlighted the glaring absence of older women from leading roles in major box-office hits.

The concept of ageism is not an uncommon one in the entertainment industry, be it Hollywood, Bollywood, or any other. We frequently witness on-screen romantic pairing of middle-aged men paired with half their age young actresses barely out of their leading strings. Older women when they're cast in films, if at all, are relegated to the role of a maternal figure or an equivalent secondary role. Rarely do we see women above the age of 60 being the leading lady of a film.  While aging male actors are celebrated as “veterans” and praised for their “silver fox” appeal, older women are rarely afforded the same grace on screen. Skewed beauty standards, rooted in misogyny and patriarchy, have rendered older female beauty to be a flawed thing and inferior to young beauty. 

The UK’s “Age Without Limits” campaign, spearheaded by the Centre for Ageing Better, is the country’s first nation-wide initiative for challenging negative stereotypes around getting older and fights widespread age discrimination in workplaces, communities, and the media. The campaign is calling on the film industry to have better representation of older women in film. On 25th may, 2026 published a study that analyzed the representation of older women of 60 and up age in Top 100 box-office success films. 

The study, conducted by the University of West London School of Film, Media and Design and helmed by Professor Dennis A. Olsen, selected 100 highest performing films released between 2023-25 in the UK were selected for assessment. It was found that out of the top 100 films, a mere five films starred an older woman as the lead, in contrast to 20 films that featured a talking creature.

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Six of the films starred a male actor called “Chris”, of which actor Chris Pratt accounted for half. Two of the remaining positions were occupied by Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth, and the sixth position featured Christian Friedel – was co-lead in an acclaimed arthouse film: Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2024). Friedel is known only to his friends as Chris. 

The five films starring an older woman (of age 60 and up) that made the top 100 chart in the UK over the three year period were Allelujah (2023), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (2023), Book Club: The Next Chapter (2023), The Substance (2024) and Freakier Friday (2025).

Commenting on the findings of the research, Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson, a vocal supporter of Age Without Limits, commented: “Women are half the population and we get older. So where are the stories about us? The older we get, the more interesting we are. I want to see more films center aging women, we are compelling, relatable, and overdue for center stage. Older women don’t need permission to exist on screen. They already exist in the world, cinema just needs to catch up.” 

In addition to this study, the campaign also conducted an opinion poll to assess public’s perception on inclusion of older women in films. When women were asked, 39% said there are not enough films being made that feature female actors over 60 as lead characters. Meanwhile 16% of people said they would be more likely to see a film if it featured a female actress over 60 — while around 8% said older women would make them less likely to watch the film if they starred as lead.

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The findings of this analysis are far from isolated. A global study conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which analysed top-grossing films of 2019 across the US, UK, France, and Germany, found that women over 50 remain heavily underrepresented on screen and are far more likely than men to be portrayed through ageist stereotypes such as being senile, frail, or physically unattractive.

The ageism debate isn't unique to the British film industry, remnants of it are reflected in Bollywood and in India’s other regional cinema industry as well. Bollywood veteran Manisha Koirala had previously echoed similar thoughts, remarking that age bias impacts women in the industry significantly more than it impacts men, and pointed out that while male actors are rarely trolled for aging, female actors are often sidelined or criticised as they grow older. 

The irony, perhaps, is that audiences do not appear nearly as opposed to seeing older women on screen as the film industry assumes. The numbers suggest viewers are open to these stories — perhaps even hungry for them. Yet mainstream cinema continues to recycle aging male heroes while sidelining women once they cross a certain age. If films are meant to reflect society, then the absence of older women from leading roles says less about audiences and far more about the industry itself.

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