Movie and TV
Girl for everything? When the role does not match the age
Actress Ursula Karven would have liked to be older for the role of a public prosecutor. Photo
© Sebastian Gollnow/dpa
In high school films, 16-year-olds are often played by people in their mid-twenties. And women in more mature roles often seem strangely young. What do the actresses think about this? And what does research say?
“How old is the actress in this film?” – This question is often not so easy to answer. A teenage girl in a series often does not seem like someone who is just growing into her body. In the new “Bridgerton” season, which recently started on the streaming service Netflix, the 17-year-old Penelope Featherington is played by the 37-year-old Nicola Coughlan. And it works the other way round too: in 2004, for example, the 29-year-old Angelina Jolie played the Mother of a 20-year-old in the blockbuster “Alexander”.
Is it true that we tend to see women of a limited age range in film and television? This is what actresses and research say about it:
Ursula Karven
When Ursula Karven (“Chinese Whispers”), now 59, thinks back to her beginnings, she found some things “idiotic”: “I played a public prosecutor when I was 28.” She herself feels that she would have liked to have been older to be able to play this role. “But our media landscape still needs time to really have the strength to recognize that older women have a big impact and that older women are sexy. This realization could happen a little better,” Karven told the German Press Agency (dpa).
Older women are little represented in German film
What Karven describes is not just a feeling. A study by the University of Rostock in 2021 found that female main characters in German cinema become increasingly rare with age. For men, this applies from the age of 50, for women from their mid-30s. The study was initiated by, among others, the Malisa Foundation, which campaigns for more equal opportunities for girls and women. The foundation was founded by actress Maria Furtwängler and her daughter. According to the study, women in German cinema were mainly portrayed as young and slim in the context of partnerships and relationships.
Communication scientist Christine Linke from the University of Wismar worked on a similar previous study from 2016 and co-wrote the book “Hidden: Women in German Film and Television”. According to her, it is important not to have a “simple media logic”. “It is not the case that you see and believe. But a daily influence, usually without alternatives, has an effect on us. It shapes us as people when we only see a limited image of women.” Men’s bodies, on the other hand, are treated differently: “While women are generally viewed more critically as they age, for men it usually only really starts in the media from the age of 40. Overall, men of all age groups are visible in film and television. And women are not.”
US actress Amanda Seyfried
At this year’s Berlinale, 38-year-old Seyfried (“Mamma Mia”) noted that she has only been offered roles as a mother since she became a mother herself. Although these are fairly limited options, she said that the roles she has been offered have become more profound: “I feel that the opportunities have become much more exciting for me personally,” she told the dpa on the sidelines of the Berlinale on the question of different acting ages. “I think everyone is fighting to be seen and understood.”
Veronica Ferres
58-year-old Veronica Ferres (“The Superwoman”) attributes the discrepancies between the age of an actress and the age of her role to pure pragmatism in some cases. “What I can understand is that 18-year-olds play 17- or 16-year-olds. Of course, that also has to do with the age of majority and with the laws on location, which simply serve to protect young people – for example, when it comes to working hours. That often makes sense for production companies,” Ferres told the dpa. But: “What I don’t understand is that younger people often play older roles.” At least: her new film “Unholy Trinity” is being released this year, in which the 58-year-old plays alongside Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson (both over 70). Her role was actually written for a woman in her early 40s.
Jella Haase
Jella Haase (31) from Berlin is known as the vulgar Chantal from the “Fack Ju Göhte” films. She was already in her early 20s when she took on the role of the high school student. This year she was seen again in the spin-off “Chantal in Fairytale Land”. “Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes a bit of life experience helps to embody a younger character,” she told the dpa. “But sometimes it doesn’t.”
But the fact that people are becoming more and more used to young girls appearing more mature than their age is not just down to films. “I think our viewing habits are being changed primarily by social media,” said the 31-year-old. “Where super-young girls look much older. That is something to be viewed critically.”
Communication researcher Linke can also attest to this on a scientific level. “In the traditional media and new media on the Internet, a hypersexualization of female bodies in particular is taking place, which even begins with children’s bodies.”
Only in teen series does the researcher make a small difference
Especially in well-known teen films and series, the actresses are often older: teenager Rachel Bilson as Summer Roberts in “The OC” was already 22 when the first season was released. Buffy actress Sarah Michelle Gellar was already 20 in real life, although she played a 16-year-old vampire hunter. The 16-year-old pop culture icon Regina George from “Mean Girls!” was played by Rachel McAdams, who was already around ten years older at the time of filming.
Linke sees a particular reason for this. “Teen series and films tend to respond to the desires of a young target group. Young people strive for idols, they often want to be older and more independent. That’s completely natural, because in this phase of life you’re looking for one identity.” In such series, an unrealistic image of teenage bodies is therefore created, says Linke. “That’s a special feature of this genre, but it’s still something to question.”