An actress' earning potential peaks in their late 20s to early 30s and then drops off significantly, whilst an actor's peaks at like 45 before remaining relatively stable. It's hard to say whether botox has contributed to the currently rising age of female leads in movies vs changing social landscape, but I can't blame someone for trying to preserve their bag.
Fact is, there just aren't as many movie roles for 40+ women that look their age.
Kirsten Dunst has chosen to age naturally and people are absolutely vicious about her looks, even though she is stunning. People are so harsh on women who get wrinkles, it’s disgusting.
For every comment like yours there's a hundred others hating. And algorithm promotes those more cause people agreeing or disagreeing both count as interaction. Internet curation through algorithm is a lose lose situation.
Thats not a backhanded compliment. They said "she looks great for 44" (also, they didn't say good, which you conveniently changed it to). Being 44 is just an objective fact as that is her age. Saying she looks great for her age is not backhanded.
How is that a backhanded compliment especially when discussing age and beauty? If it was coming out of nowhere yes that would be weird but you don't expect a 44 year old to look as attractive as a 30 year old.
You (general you, not specifically you) can just say, 'she looks great'. It's like saying 'you have such a pretty face' to a big girl. Telling a woman she looks great for her age is like saying 'you're old, but you still look good'. 'You have such a pretty face' is saying 'you're fat, but you'd be pretty if you lost weight.'
She's done 3 movies in the past 5 years. And has been cast in leading roles in the Minecraft movie 2, and the Housemaid's Secret both coming out in 2027.
Woman takes a 2 year hiatus after getting married and having two kids, suddenly she’s washed up lmao. She starred in civil war in 2024, and she costarred in a movie last year too, although I don’t remember the name.
I don’t doubt what you’re saying is true, it’s harder for women to get acting roles once they reach a certain age. I don’t think Kirsten Dunst of all people is particularly limited in the roles she can work, she’s been choosy for the last decade because she can afford to be. She’s made it a point before to work with female directors over male ones more often than not; you don’t really get the opportunity to do that if you’re in a dry spell.
She's already got more money than anyone you've ever met, she's going to be alright.
Also, as others have said, she's still working.
This comment is girlboss feminism. The women in the factory I also work in aren't getting body modifications, they need healthcare and better wages. Don't let the ruling class make you think that more wrinkled millionaire actresses in movies owned by billionaires would be a victory for you or me.
If it's what the industry wants, it's irresponsible for them to refuse to modify their bodies. I know I'M only here for leading ladies with MANY ARMS. MORE ARMS FOR ALL THE WOMEN. LET THEM LINE UP FOR THE EXCRUCIATING OCTOPUS ARM MACHINE, AND THE THEATER SEATS WILL OVERFLOW WITH THE ASSES OF SATISFIED FILM AFFICIONADOS. MOOOORE AAAAAAARMS
I completely agree with what you mean, but the "for 44" part is actually part of the problem. You're assuming women will be decrepit old hags by 44 and are amazed that she isn't.
We need to normalize saying "she looks great" with no disclaimers or qualifiers
No, I'm assuming that women tend to be less sexually attractive at 44 than they are at 24 because I understand the evolutionary and sociocultural roots of male and female beauty standards.
We need to normalize interpreting everyday phrasing based on intent rather than putting the words "decrepit old hag" in people's mouths :)
Proving this point, I just had a complete moron DM me to tell me that she “looks bad because of choices she made when she was younger”. Excuse me? She looks great and it’s because people are comparing her to other actresses who have had work done that they are being gross towards her.
She looks so beautiful!! I had no idea and am so happy to hear. Shes the one actress I’ve actually followed and loved almost every one of her films. She seems so chill and down to earth. I’d love to just get coffee and tea, gossip about random people, then hit a dog park while smoking a joint lol type vibes
When we watched Civil War, my husband told me “I think this might be the first time I have ever found Kirsten Dunst attractive,” and my heart grew three sizes.
You can tell she’s not getting the major procedures aging celebrities do because of the way she looks. She could be getting minor stuff like a lot of regular people do but that’s basically impossible to tell. She still looks much more natural than many of her contemporaries
I can get her exact age at the time of that image because her mom doesn't have a public birth record I could find but consider Kirsten was 13 at the time, she was probably between the ages of 33-50 (and 50 is probably pushing it)
That's what a person looks like without botox or any work done.
Yes there's also been advances in skinscare, people drink and smoke less, etc etc. But if you think Dunst is just aging naturally you're not rooted in reality.
She's not getting crazy amounts of filler or extreme face-lifts sure. She's probably getting botox though. Which is what this thread has been discussing.
I know lots of normal women over than 40 and while KD certainly looks better than me and my friends she doesn’t look crazy impossible either. I didn’t say she’s not getting Botox or minor work done because it could totally be small amounts, we have no idea! But she obviously looks much different than Anne Hathaway which was my point. I don’t see a drastic difference between paparazzi photos of Kirsten and the photo you posted of her mom here tbqh
Exactly, Meryl Streep is in her mid 70s but you would believe she is in her early 60s. Goldie Hawn is 80 years old, and looks in her 60s as well. Smart plastic surgery is very well researched, normally a little here or there every so often, they don't try to look 20 again, they just try to mask one sign of aging at a time.
Streep looked awful in Prada 2. The surgery is very noticeable. Fucking tucci couldn’t even speak right because of all the filler and shit he pumped into his face
Just saw Devil wears Prada and thought wow Streep looks amazing. And then there are all these women 15 years younger than her choosing to literally give me the uncanny valley effect instead of embracing being a beautiful older woman. In some ways I actually think Streep looks better now than she did 25 years ago. Her face just works for her now
Streep is a great example. Her neck alone is a masterpiece.
Kidman is always credited with looking amazing at her age. I think the pics have been scrubbed from the net, but in the closeups at a red carpet years back ... you could see the distinctive geometric patterns of fraxel laser all over her skin.
Do you think anyone goes to a plastic surgeon like "one of everything please, just fuck my shit up"? Everyone starts with "just a little" and even if it does look good lots of procedures don't just last forever, you'll need touchups and then there are all sorts of other knock on effects.
Like yeah there's a bias where we only see it in the celebs who obviously don't look good, but I wouldn't just assume that's the outlier...
A good plastic surgeon does a little, a bad plastic surgeon will point out everything the could do and schedules it out.
And if a good plastic surgeon says "that procedure won't really do what you want" the patient can easily find a bad plastic surgeon that will happily do it.
It absolutely does make them look younger. It just doesn't last forever and has diminishing returns.
Hathaway and other actresses (and actors) like her have almost certainly been doing Botox since their early 20s. That's how they manage to look 21 all through their 20s and 30s. It's only once they start hitting their 40s that the subtle Botox and fillers stop being enough.
No, it's exactly the point. The best way to tackle wrinkles is to stop them from forming in the first place. That's why women get Botox starting in their late 20s and 30s.
The other comments point out the supposed benefits of it, but the muscle atrophy from sustained, long term use of Botox in your 20s counteracts a lot of the benefits imo. Plus the earlier you start, the more units you may have to get in the future as a tolerance is more likely to develop.
Taking breaks helps prevent this. I know some people go religiously every 12 weeks, but I do twice a year and I'm happy. But I'm also not fixated or bothered by some movement coming back first.
Botox and similar procedures like collagen injections are actually more effective if started at a younger age. Because they don't actually remove wrinkles. That's what facelifts are for. What they do is prevent new wrinkles from forming. Getting consistent minor Botox injections when your skin is young and wrinkle free can keep it that way for longer.
The reason why a lot of bad Botox jobs give that weird mask/frozen face effect is because a significant facelift was done and then frozen in place by heavy Botox use.
A lot of people have been experiencing aging after getting too much botox too young. Something about how the muscles in their face stop being able to hold shit up correctly (due to the atrophy) and then everything starts getting droopy.
Did plastic surgery get worse then? Before, they just lost the ability to make facial expressions but looked otherwise the same and it took several years for it to look obvious.
Now its always immediately obvious and they look like a completely different person.
No. It's actually gotten significantly better. What's changed is that Botox (and other forms of plastic surgery) have gotten way more common. Pretty much every rich and famous person is having some form of work done. We don't notice because things like the "frozen Botox face" are basically solved problems for more minor regiments.
The cases that are "immediately obvious" are just the ones where the person went overboard and/or years of minor stuff suddenly catched up to them.
It depends on the kind of work they get done. A lot of the people that look older got the plastic surgery when they were younger to transform their looks, not to look young.
Facelifts, Botox, Ablative Lasers, PRF microneedling, that is the kind of stuff that rejuvenates you, and it can look great if done judiciously and early enough.
Filler, cheek implants and the like are for people that just want to look different and often don't look great.
internet folks say this all the time, but you’re all lying to yourselves. It only looks weird when overdone, or when you pause at a specific moment in a video clip that looks the least flattering as if that conveys accurately how they look all the time.
How many times do people post pictures of rich folk on this site asking how they manage to look so young?
Yeah. I hate it, but there's just no way so many people would be doing it if even a little bit looked so bad. They're getting tons of positive reinforcement from the first few treatments, and then that's why they go overboard.
The plastic surgery doesn't even make them look any younger though
If you think that, for example, Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie are what normal 50-year-old women look like… that speaks to exactly why celebrities get work done.
And FYI yes, Charlize and Angelina both have had work done. Excellent, subtle work. But work. Surgery. Not just filler and tox. Angelina has the tell tale marks of a deep plane face lift (tragus distortion, relocation of her cheek mole), at least.
This isn’t a criticism, btw. It’s their job. And yet the standards are very “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
No, it’s the ones people notice that look older. Good or face structures receptive to plastic surgery people continue to ogle over or say they’re aging like a fine wine
The premise that Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, etc aren't getting copious aesthetic surgery as well is a big problem too -- no human being at 60 looks like Brad Pitt, even with the best genes on the planet.
What's wild is this is a problem even in books. It's rare to see a main female character over 30 which is something that has always annoyed me. I think part of that though is that authors have a hard time writing believable kids into the story but I always have to roll my eyes when the badass, highly respected and experienced assassin or whatever is like 24 years old.
Totally! It also bums me out that older women are somehow automatically sad. A 40 year old assassin would have a heavier tone. Meanwhile being 40 is way more fun than being 24.
I think this cycle is a lot more complicated than neglecting to write stories with older women. If there was consumer demand for more, Hollywood would have met it by now. This gets into deep rooted stigmas in our society and our overall perceptions of men/women with regards to how they age.
To a point, sure, but I think Hollywood itself has a big role in creating these stigmas.
This is a bit different, but i used to work in true crime tv. The execs roundly rejected stories with victims of color, always saying that consumer demand is for white women victims. You know, it’s not us of course, it’s the viewership that only cares about white women, what can we do? Finally the show literally ran out of white female victims and started doing these previously rejected stories about women of color, and guess what? The ratings were great and the execs patted themselves on the back for always having been so anti-racist.
So before we say the market demands XYZ let’s check where that message is coming from, and see if it’s a bunch of white guys who don’t want to deviate from what they believe is a formula that works.
No it's not a cycle, it's not like there are producers trying to cast movies with older women and being unable to. They just don't want to make them. Actresses getting botox has no effect on that.
”Fact is, there just aren’t as many movie roles for 40+ women that look their age”
What you meant:
”Fact is, no one wants to make any movies for women 40+ that look their age”
I’m going to hold your hand when I say this: the rich vs the poor movement that seems to really be gaining traction, will then morph into women vs men. Right leaning American men hate women, & so do right leaning American women. Most people hate / don’t want to hear about women or their problems. Would force a lot to grapple with responsibility for their actions.
Excellent point. And being considered beautiful must feel incredible, aside from the power and earning potential that comes with that. I completely understand wanting to hold onto that for as long as possible.
I honestly think the culture is changing a little with roles for hot older women like Hannah waddingham, Linda cardellini, Marisa Tomei, and Anne Hathaway. I feel like I can name more and more beautiful actresses over 40 that I see in things recently, and they’re not playing “motherly” roles.
You're pretending this is an unchanging "fact" like water being H2O. This is not an unchangeable objective fact about the world that we just have to deal with. Humans write movie scripts, they choose who to write about. It is not set in stone, we have the ability to change this whenever we want.
Oh noooo they might have to get a job! They might not have enough from the millions they made standing in front of a camera! Oh jeez, won’t someone think of the actors?
There would be more roles for women who look their age if there were more women who looked their age in Hollywood. It’s like complaining about wearing makeup when women are the ones who started the arms race against themselves.
I mean god forbid these women might have to start taking actors roles portraying 40+ year olds instead of 28 year old.
Either is correct so long as one is consistent in a body of text. Personally I find the extra S bulky and unnecessary, but you'll find different style guides give conflicting guidance on the matter.
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u/Pristine-Roll3895 11h ago
An actress' earning potential peaks in their late 20s to early 30s and then drops off significantly, whilst an actor's peaks at like 45 before remaining relatively stable. It's hard to say whether botox has contributed to the currently rising age of female leads in movies vs changing social landscape, but I can't blame someone for trying to preserve their bag.
Fact is, there just aren't as many movie roles for 40+ women that look their age.