Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Demi Moore was triumphant last weekend, winning a Golden Globe — her first significant award in an acting career spanning over four decades — for her role in The Substance, a film promoted as a satire about the entertainment industry’s preoccupation with youth and beauty.Moore plays the spandex-wearing Elisabeth Sparkle, axed as a television fitness instructor after turning 50, and facing career death until she discovers a mysterious “substance” promising youth. On taking this lurid liquid, she splits in two, producing a fresh-bodied version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley, which attracts the attention of entertainment executives and propels her to stardom.In her acceptance speech, Moore drew on the film’s themes of women’s challenges in the industry. Thirty years ago, she said, a Hollywood producer dismissed her as a “popcorn actress”: popular but not substantial. “I bought in and I believed that, and that corroded me.” A few years ago, she reached a low point, thinking “maybe this was it, maybe I was complete. I’ve done what I was supposed to do.” But then the script for The Substance landed — a sign from “the universe” that her career was “not done”.I hated the film. The only reason I watched to the end was because my cinema companions were seemingly rooted to their seats The sentiment mirrors that expressed by Pamela Anderson, whose character in the forthcoming The Last Showgirl also grapples with her professional demise. Anderson, best known for running around sun-soaked beaches in a red swimsuit, told W magazine that before she got the script she was “thinking, I’m probably never going to do a film of any substance. I was beating myself up a little bit.”No doubt these two actresses’ frustrations reflect an industry that pigeonholes attractive women. (Though to a normie like me, the life of a popcorn actress looks pretty good.) In winning a Golden Globe for a role that hinges on her becoming physically unattractive, Moore follows a tradition of good-looking actors seeking critical acclaim by appearing grim or just plain. Charlize Theron picked up an Oscar for playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, as did Nicole Kidman for donning a prosthetic nose to become Virginia Woolf in The Hours. These actors, as well as winning prizes, usually get called that modish, inflated term: brave. Such aggrandisement was called out last year by Kate Winslet, who said she was sick of being lauded for not wearing make-up, or being an average — rather than thin — body size. “I’m not in Ukraine, I am an actor.” Moore’s win at 62 — together with 73-year-old Jean Smart’s Golden Globe for the comedy series Hacks — is seen as a sign that older women are finally getting their dues, even taking romantic leads (the lascivious hags) opposite younger men, and reversing a Hollywood trope. In the new film Babygirl, Kidman (57) plays a chief executive in a fetishistic affair with an intern played by Harris Dickinson (28). This is just one of a recent crop of films with older women and younger men. Kidman was in A Family Affair last year starring Zac Efron, and Anne Hathaway was in The Idea of You alongside Nicholas Galitzine. Later this year, the new Bridget Jones film will see Renée Zellweger falling for a man more than two decades younger.This is some shift from the 1967 film The Graduate, in which Anne Bancroft, who stars as the middle-aged seductress Mrs Robinson, was only six years older than Dustin Hoffman, who played Benjamin Braddock. The image of a forty-something Woody Allen smooching schoolgirl Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan haunts me to this day.However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I admire Moore for navigating a fickle industry for so long — she certainly seemed far more robust than Andrew McCarthy in his documentary about the cohort of actors dubbed the “Brat Pack” who came of age in 1985 with The Breakfast Club and St Elmo’s Fire. But just how much acting did she do in The Substance beyond morphing from fabulous to disgusting with the help of pustulating prosthetics?I hated the film. The only reason I watched to the end was because my cinema companions were seemingly rooted to their seats. When the lights came on, each of us confessed to misguidedly believing the others were enjoying themselves. I felt rising despair with each shot of Qualley’s firm thighs, glistening lips and creamy complexion. It became impossible to separate satire of Hollywood’s beauty standards from fetishisation. Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, says that the high-profile cases of older female characters, “skew our perceptions of how media portrayals may be changing”. Fifty-two per cent of male characters in the top 100 grossing films, she found, are 40 and older compared to 28 per cent of female characters. Smart’s role in Hacks as Deborah Vance, a Las Vegas comedian adapting to changing sensibilities, is a “unicorn”, says Lauzen. “The exceedingly rare character who remains ambitious in her third act of life and experiences great success.” It comes at a cost as the fictional comedian tells her protégée: “You have to scratch and claw and it never fucking ends. And it doesn’t get better, it just gets harder.” Still, better than swallowing gloop.Emma is the FT’s work & careers writerFind out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning
