Before we got completely sidetracked by Pedro Pascal ruff-housing on the floor with tiny puppies, I made a passing, sarcastic comment in that post about studio heads not greenlighting enough female-led films. The only constituency rarer than female-led films, is movies centered on and starring — gasp — older women. 100 years in the business and Hollywood still largely denies that demographic exists. Pitiful. A campaign in the UK called Age Without Limits just commissioned a survey to put stark numbers to this trend, looking specifically at the largest grossing films in the UK in 2023, 2024, and 2024. The results? Statistically speaking, a big box office hit is four times more likely to star talking animals or male actors named Chris than a woman over 60. Surprising? No. Still disheartening? Infuriatingly so. More from the survey:

Creatures & Chrises: Box office hit films are four times more likely to star a talking animal than a woman over 60, according to a new survey by Age Without Limits. The anti-ageism campaign studied the 100 highest performing films released in the UK in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and found that while five starred an older woman, about 20 featured creatures who chat. Meanwhile six starred a male actor called Chris — of which Chris Pratt accounted for half. However, while two of the remaining Chris instances (Pine and Hemsworth) headlined big budget blockbusters, the sixth — Christian Friedel — was co-lead in an acclaimed arthouse film: Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2024). Freidel is known only to his friends as Chris.

Leading Ladies: The five films starring an older woman 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). Lower down on the box office chart, a number of titles starring older women — including Hard Truths, I’m Still Here and Thelma — further suggest that such movies can also be critical successes. The second highest-grossing film of 2025 in the UK, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, would have made the cut had its star, Renée Zellweger, been three years older. The time period also coincides with a period marked by the death or retirement of a number of popular female British actors, such as Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright and Glenda Jackson, as well as Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave.

Emma Thompson weighs in: “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 centre on ageing women, we are compelling, relatable, and overdue for centre stage. Older women don’t need permission to exist on screen. They already exist in the world, cinema just needs to catch up.”

Dr. Carole Easton, chief executive at the Centre for Ageing Better: “Up to one in five UK cinema attendees are aged 55 and above, this age group spends hundreds of millions of pounds every year on cinema. The representation of older actors in major film roles is so disproportionate to the proportion of older women in the cinema-going audience, the lack of representation is insulting, frankly.” She added: “Sadly, it is not just in cinema where this happens. In many forms of media, in many different employment sectors and parts of public life, the input of older women is minimised, marginalised and ignored. We must all push back against ageism, and its intersection with sexism, by telling the cultural gatekeepers that we want all aspects and stages of life represented in the things we watch, listen to and read.”

[From The Guardian]

Ok, I’m not centering the male Chris issue, I’m just getting this bit out of the way: the fact that Chris Pratt accounts for 50% of the Chrises, arguably #WorstChris, is the perfect sour cherry to this sh-t statistical sundae. And it gets more grim: further research showed that on average, older women speak 14% less than their older men counterparts on screen, and most of the roles written for older women are passive characters. The Guardian article also touched on the Oscars and how they’re notorious for awarding young women but older men in the lead acting categories. Forget 30-year-old Timothée Chalamet (and I know many have actively been working on that) — prognosticators were crying about Michael B. Jordan being too young to win Best Actor at 39. Can you IMAGINE the industry saying that about a potential Best Actress winner?? But the glimmer of good news, on the Oscar front at least, is that the average age for lead actress winners is consistently trending upwards, from 33 in the 1940s to 44 this decade. The article also cited that Meryl Streep-starring The Devil Wears Prada 2 has been a box office bonanza. Though it is trailing The Super Mario Galaxy Movie for overall box office this year, a film that The Guardian couldn’t help but note stars Chris Pratt and talking animals, sigh. Nevertheless, we persist.

PS — The mention of Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, and Judi Dench in the same sentence reminds me that I’m looooong overdue for a rewatch of Tea with Mussolini.

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Photos via Instagram and credit: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon, James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon