Hollywood’s geriatric action stars: a positive change in a culture obsessed with youth, or risk-averse creative decrepitude? It’s more complicated, writes Adam Mars-Jones.
It is easy to feel that the main event of celebrity culture is now the showing-up of the failing flesh, and all the acclaim of youth and freshness that goes before is only a pretext. When identification fails, when the idol fails to retire gracefully, things can turn nasty. Films are so centrally about youth and beauty that ageing on screen is a real taboo. We do not feel sympathetic when our idols reveal themselves as mortal – we feel betrayed. They have let down their side of the bargain, and unless they find a way to negotiate a new contract with a degree of energy and grace, fans become feral.
This used to be primarily the experience of women in films, but these days there is almost as full a range of options and delusions available to male movie stars as to their female counterparts.
There’s always been an archetype at hand for aging action stars to slip into—think grizzled detectives and aint-gonna-take-it-no-more vigilantes. Pictured above: Charles Bronson, from one of the Death Wish movies in the 70s and 80s, god knows which.
