A new study by the anti-ageism campaign Age Without Limits has revealed that box office hit films are four times more likely to star a talking animal than a woman over 60. The survey examined the 100 highest-grossing films released in the UK in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and found that while only five featured an older woman in a leading role, approximately 20 films included animals that speak.
In comparison, six films starred a male actor named Chris, with Chris Pratt accounting for half of those. The other Chris instances included Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth, who headlined major blockbusters, and Christian Friedel, who co-starred in the acclaimed arthouse film The Zone of Interest (2024). The five films starring an older woman that made the top 100 chart 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 the box office chart, several titles featuring older women, including Hard Truths, I'm Still Here, and Thelma, have also achieved critical success. Notably, the second highest-grossing film of 2025 in the UK, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, would have qualified had its star, Renée Zellweger, been three years older. The study period also coincided with the death or retirement of several popular female British actors, such as Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Glenda Jackson, Judi Dench, and Vanessa Redgrave. Jackson's final film, The Great Escaper, did not make the cut as she was a co-star rather than the lead.
Emma Thompson, 67, commented on the findings: "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." Thompson received rave reviews for her leading role in the noir drama Dead of Winter (2025), but it earned only $112,006 in the UK. She also starred in the 2022 drama Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, which took $1.3 million in the UK despite the ongoing impact of the Covid pandemic.
The Centre for Ageing Better, which runs the Age Without Limits campaign, also surveyed 4,000 members of the public to gauge audience interest. One in six respondents said they would be more likely to see a film featuring an older female lead, while 33% felt there were insufficient films starring women over 60. Only 3% believed too many such films were made. Dr. Carole Easton, chief executive of the Centre for Ageing Better, stated: "It is absolutely ludicrous to think so few films have been made in recent years that have an older woman at the front and centre. Up to one in five UK cinema attendees are aged 55 and above, spending hundreds of millions of pounds annually. 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."
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." Previous research by the charity, which sampled 1,200 speaking characters across nearly 50 popular films released between 2010 and 2022, found that only one in three was aged 50 or over. The study, authored by academics at the University of West London School of Film, Media and Design, revealed that female characters aged 65 and over were more than three times less likely than men of the same age to be featured in British films over the last decade.
Women characters over 50 also spoke 14% less than older men in the sample. The researchers criticised the film industry's attempts to improve representation, particularly highlighting the scarcity of women in their 70s and 80s on screen. They found that characters played by women over 60 were often not empowered or active but rather "passive, pitiable, ridiculed for failing to act their age and often irrelevant to the main plot." Harriet Bailiss, co-lead of the Age Without Limits campaign, said: "By failing to properly represent older people, and older women in particular, the film industry is actively participating in the pushing of older people to the margins of society. For many older people who have come to question their value through internalising the ageism they see around them every day, this lack of representation will reinforce the idea that older people matter less as they get older. No wonder so many women talk about feeling invisible as they get older when they don't see themselves reflected back in popular culture or advertising."
New research published in March found that while the Academy Awards have traditionally awarded most acting Oscars to older men and younger women, Michelle Yeoh's historic victory at age 60 in 2023 appears to have paved the way for better representation. Only seven women over 60 have won the Best Actress Oscar, with just two—Jessica Tandy and Katharine Hepburn—doing so at age 70 or older. The BBC found that the average age of a Best Actress nominee has risen from 33 in the 1940s to 36 in the 1970s, 40 in the 2000s, and now stands at 44 in the current decade. Older women who may be in contention for an Oscar next year include 65-year-old Julianne Moore, 75-year-old Marion Bailey, and 93-year-old Ellen Burstyn. Meanwhile, Meryl Streep, 76, stars in the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, which is currently the fourth highest-grossing film in the UK, trailing Michael, Project Hail Mary, and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie—which features both Chris Pratt and talking animals.
