Sexy seniors rewriting Hollywood love recipe

When a film star seduces someone 20 or 30 years their junior on screen, the audience doesn't bat an eyelid. In fact, it is an established cinema convention.

If the older star is a woman, however, public reaction is harder to predict. But now Hollywood, so long accused of sexism because of the way it treats female talent, finally seems prepared to tackle a subject once regarded as beyond the pale: sex and the 60-something woman.

Sigourney Weaver, who stars in this month's new sci-fi blockbuster Avatar, has revealed that in her next film she plays the lover of an actor little more than half her age. In Cedar Rapids, Weaver, 60, is cast opposite comic actor Ed Helms in the role of her 35-year-old former pupil.

The actress, who made her name 30 years ago in Alien, said she believes relationships between older women and much younger men are much more common than film producers believe. "I play his grade-school science teacher that he had a crush on," she explained. "Years later, we consummate our relationship and are going out, but I have to break it off because he's so serious about me."

Weaver said Avatar's director, James Cameron, cut her sex scenes from his final version of the film, although she understood the cuts were based on his feeling about the structure of the story.

All the same, Weaver has also made it clear she is pleased to be in Cedar Rapids and making the point that women in their 60s can still be attractive and sexually active.

Weaver's comments follow the success of Meryl Streep's new comedy, It's Complicated, in which she plays a divorced woman unexpectedly pursued by her former husband (Alec Baldwin). Last week, the part earned Streep, who is also 60, her second Golden Globe nomination this year for best comedy performance by an actress (the other is for her portrayal of the television chef Julia Child in Julie & Julia).

In the role of Jane Adler, a woman who, although well into middle age, is eventually more appealing to her former husband than his young "trophy wife", Streep is breaking the unspoken film industry rule that audiences don't want to see older women in physical relationships with leading men.

Since 1967, when Anne Bancroft vamped it up as Mrs Robinson in Mike Nichols's The Graduate, there have been few screen portrayals of sexually alluring older women.

Ageing male stars suffer under no such limitations, with Larry David romancing Evan Rachel Wood this year in Woody Allen's Whatever Works and Bill Murray beguiling Scarlett Johansson in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation in 2003.

It's Complicated is written and directed by Nancy Meyer, who has a reputation as a crusader in this area, following her success with the 2003 romantic comedy Something's Gotta Give, starring Diane Keaton.

"I think there's an audience for it. We'll see if this movie does well. I hope they'll do more movies where the lead character can be close to 58 or 60 or 62 and have a life in the movie, not just play the wacky mother," said Meyers.

Some critics in America have questioned the decision by Meyers to show Baldwin without his clothes on and not Streep, but the writer has defended her decision. "I thought the joke of him being naked was about him," said Meyers. "I never saw Jane [Streep's character] acting that way; she wouldn't do that, though she's nervous about being naked before him. When they broke up she was in her 40s; now she's in her late 50s."

When the musical Mamma Mia!, also starring Streep in the lead romantic role, became a huge hit last year, the actress expressed her irritation with Hollywood's apparent inability to make films that take older women seriously. Now the success of her new film is celebrated by Vanity Fair, which has her on the cover of its US January edition.

In it, Streep expresses her surprise at the parts she is playing these days: "It's incredible - I'm 60 and I'm playing the romantic lead in romantic comedies! Bette Davis is rolling over in her grave. She was 42 when she did All About Eve and she was 54 when she did What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

Not only is Streep allowed to appear in bed with Baldwin in It's Complicated, but Hollywood producers have also supported Goldie Hawn's plan to write, direct and star in an unconventional romantic comedy about a woman coping with the death of her former husband in late middle-age. Hawn, 64, had battled with the studios for three years in an effort to make the film, but Ashes to Ashes is finally scheduled for release next year.

A black comedy, it tells the story of a divorcee's attempt to scatter her former husband's ashes in Kathmandu, as she encounters a series of life-changing experiences.

Hawn remains passionate about the project, but has said it "has frustrated me more than anything I've ever done".

She said reaching the age of 60 was a big milestone in her career and has made it harder to sell her ideas to producers.

"Hollywood is fearful because most of the films that they put their heart and soul behind are heartless films that cost about $180 million," she said.

"But when you look at women's films and the amount of money they have generated, it would shock you. There aren't many women's films made, but the success rate of women's to men's films is much greater."

Until Hawn's husband, Kurt Russell, agreed to be in Ashes to Ashes, her script was repeatedly turned down by producers.

"The studio reaction always was, 'Who's the man?' It's just the way it goes. You can't win," she said.

"But I can feel incredibly frustrated at the state of the business and knowing that there's an untapped, unserved audience out there that will come out for the right movie."

There are other big-name, former leading ladies who are still registering box-office success in their seventh decade. Charlotte Rampling, 63, is also to star next year in a comedy all about sex. Rampling has previously condemned the treatment of older actresses in Hollywood, saying: "The system in Europe is nothing like in Hollywood. It is not so barbaric in terms of the ageing process." Now she has a lead role in Rio Sex Comedy alongside Bill Pullman.

Glenn Close, 62, won an Emmy in September for her performance as the stylishly deadly lawyer Patty Hewes in television series Damages. In her acceptance speech she heralded a new era of three-dimensional roles for middle-aged actresses.

MATURE SIRENS

Mae West
Born in 1893, she became the mistress of screen sexual innuendo, until censorship drove her back to the stage in the 1950s. Billy Wilder offered her the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950), but later said: "The idea of Mae West was idiotic because we only had to talk to her to find out that she thought she was as great, as desirable, as sexy as she had ever been."

Bette Davis
Born in 1908, her career took off when she joined Warner Bros in 1932, but she continued to give her stylish, clipped delivery in leading roles until the late 1940s. Her heyday, with films such as Now, Voyager and All About Eve, lasted into her 40s.

Anne Bancroft
Born in 1931, she came to represent the voracious appetites of attractive older women, but she was just 36 - only six years older than Dustin Hoffman - when she took the part of his seducer Mrs Robinson in The Graduate (1967).

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