Acting : Hollywood: It's Not Age Before Beauty, It's Beauty Before Age (And That's the Problem) by Andrew Bryan Smith

Maybe you read this Vulture.com article on the "Older-Man Problem" of Scarlett Johannsson, Jennifer Lawrence, and Emma Stone -- that is, recently they've played the love interests of much older men: http://www.vulture.com/2015/05/emma-jlaw-and-scarletts-older-man-problem... Writer Kyle Buchanan charts the age differences of three actors and their opposites in recent movies, but few actors play their exact age. (See "Pitch Perfect 2." Anna Kendrick is 30. Rebel Wilson was 29 till she was outed as 35 a couple of weeks ago.) It's now how casting works, and it's not how audiences experience characters and movies and TV. Actors play -- and are cast in -- "ranges." Bradley Cooper is 40 but plays "30s." Emma Stone, 27, played a high-schooler in the Spider-Man reboot and its sequel, and she'd have no trouble fitting in with the cast of "Pitch Perfect 2," either. Rebel Wilson looks exactly the same as she did two weeks ago, but at 35, now she's "almost forty." Rachel McAdams is 37, or "nearly decomposing." So everybody keep acting like "The Notebook" was just a couple of years ago. Al Pacino has been playing "40s" for 30 years. Tommy Lee Jones was born in his 40s. The question isn't how old you are -- it's how old the audience believes your character to be. Tom Cruise is 50. Tom Cavanagh is 50. Dylan McDermott is 50. And I hate every last one of them. Denzel Washington is 60, but black don't crack. The Rock is 43, and Samoan just keeps on goin'. In "Gangster Squad," opposite then-25 Emma Stone, who seemed even younger, Sean Penn played Mickey Cohen, who, when he was arrested in 1950, was 38, which looked much older by our standards today. Marlon Brando was 26 in "Streetcar" -- 26! (And two years younger when he played the role on Broadway!) Does Andrew Garfield pull off the same feat today? No. Not because he's not as "good" as Brando, but because 26 today looks a lot younger than it did then. I blame diet and exercise. That's why I avoid them. Amy Schumer addresses the question more accurately in her "Last Fuckable Day." It's the signs of aging that Hollywood -- and by extension, audiences -- have a problem with. Hollywood doesn't like wrinkles, sag, extra weight anywhere, thinning or gray hair -- the list goes on. And it's much harder for women to avoid these signs. Audiences and Hollywood, Hollywood and audiences, don't like muscular women, and muscles help burn more calories, which helps keep weight off. Hollywood and audiences like women "soft," which is a sweet spot of BMI for hips, breasts, and upper arms that's incredibly difficult to maintain day-to-day. Shooting in daylight doesn't help, either. Aged skin is really sun-damaged skin. (Bright lights indoors, too.) What can we do about this? Cast your tastes. I prefer what we euphemistically call "character actors" -- people I consider "attractive" instead of pretty or handsome. On paper, Matt Damon is not good-looking. He's got That Nose. And that chin. His head's too squat. His eyes are too far apart and too narrow on the vertical. On paper, he's a disaster. But goddamn if the son of a bitch ain't attractive. He holds my attention. Guy's doing two-a-days, working with gunmen and kung fu masters for 12 weeks' prep, eating unsalted chicken breasts and lemon juice, but that monologue at the diner in "The Bourne Identity" is still the best sequence in the movie for me. I like personality. With actors, whether human or porcine, personality goes a long way. It's beauty standards, not age. 
Cast who you like, fight for them, and work with hair and makeup and wardrobe and every other professional, on-set and off, to make your audiences see what you see in them. ABS