If it feels like you’ve seen a lot of movies lately where women are dating much younger men, well, it’s because you have. The latest is “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” now streaming on Peacock, where in her fourth and likely final outing, Renée Zellweger’s new love interest is played by 26-years-younger star of “The White Lotus,” Leo Woodall.
But Bridget is not alone. Last year saw the release of “The Idea of You,” in which Anne Hathaway’s character falls in love with a pop star 16 years her junior (played by Nicholas Galitzine); “A Family Affair,” where Nicole Kidman falls in love with a man also 16 years her junior (played by Zac Efron, who is 20 years younger than Kidman in real life); “Lonely Planet,” which sees Laura Dern fall for Liam Hemsworth, who is 23 years younger than her; and “Babygirl,” wherein Kidman once again plays a character who falls for a man 24 years younger than her (Harris Dickinson, who in real life is 29 years younger than Kidman). And of course the 2023 Todd Haynes film, “May December,” starring Julianne Moore and Charles Melton.
It’s a trend that’s becoming hard to ignore, though “Bridget Jones” star Zellweger told TheWrap she finds it “interesting … that people think it’s a novelty. I mean, what does that say about what we’ve normalized, in terms of the dynamics between different ages and the sexes?”
She’s not wrong. May-December romances between older men and younger women have long been present onscreen. From “Sabrina” in 1954 to “Lost in Translation” in 2003. Among more recent examples, 53-year-old Ke Huy Quan played a love interest to 34-year-old Ariana DeBose in “Love Hurts.”
Flip the gender, though, and the most memorable older woman/younger man romance onscreen remains 1967’s “The Graduate,” with Anne Bancroft initiating an affair with Dustin Hoffman (although in real life, the two were actually just six years apart).
So why the new trend in romance? Experts told TheWrap that, while May-December romances aren’t as common in real life as Hollywood would make you believe, this spate of films tackling this topic reflect the natural evolution of roles for women, especially as they’re given more access and agency in Hollywood to create the roles themselves. And as more women are in positions of power at the studios making these kinds of movies — from Jennifer Salke at Amazon Studios to Donna Langley at Universal to Bela Bajaria at Netflix — roles for women over 40, including romantic leads, are gaining prominence.
“I think that it is, in some ways, a very logical next step of women claiming a space in Hollywood to be an older woman,” Sarah Banet-Weiser, Dean at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and Associate for the USC Gender Studies Program, told TheWrap.
“Claiming that space also means a new recognition, and a new kind of revaluing of a woman over 50, their ideas, their sexuality, their agency,” she said.
Dr. Jessica Carbino, who got her PhD at UCLA and worked as a sociologist for dating apps Tinder and Bumble, agreed, adding that women in Hollywood may be establishing more independence, and even control, with stories like this.
“I think what’s going on is you’re seeing a cultural moment in which there’s this broader understanding, maybe born out of the #MeToo movement, where there are more films, more books being written about women in ways that challenge conventional norms,” Carbino said, “and that provide them with a certain air of control and potential dominance, and questions about what that means in relationships.”
Women are also the creative force behind many of these stories, which makes a difference.
“Babygirl” was written and directed by Halina Reijn, and Kidman said bluntly she doesn’t think she could have given the same performance with a male director. “Lonely Planet” was written and directed by Susannah Grant. And though directed by Michael Showalter, “The Idea of You” was creatively spearheaded largely by women, with Gabrielle Union, Anne Hathaway and Cathy Schulman all producing and Amazon Studios head Jen Salke steering the project.
Speaking to TheWrap in 2024 for the film, Schulman noted that the nature of the production team made a huge impact.”I think a bunch of women came together to make this because we had to tell the story about pulling women out of compartments,” she said at the time. “This whole idea that you should be one thing at a time; you can be a mother, you can be a grandmother, you could be a worker, you can be a wife, but you can’t be everything, and all of it all at the same time. I think it was natural that women would come together because we all feel that.”
Schulman also pointed out that, in the case of Union, the idea of falling for a younger man isn’t theoretical, as she’s nine years older than her husband, Dwyane Wade. And Union’s not the only real-life example. Demi Moore was 15 years older than her now ex-husband Ashton Kutcher. Priyanka Chopra-Jonas is 10 years older than her husband.
“These relationships have existed for as long as anyone can remember. It’s just that they’re not portrayed on screen, and they’re starting to now,” Woodall, who plays Zellweger’s younger boyfriend in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” told TheWrap.
He continued: “And people maybe aren’t used to it yet. It’s not been normalized as it has the opposite version. And I’m sure we’ll see more of it, and people will get more used to it, and then it will sort of be less of a topic of conversation.”
Getting to a point where this is unremarkable is the point for many. That’s part of what drew Dern to “Lonely Planet”— the fact that the age difference doesn’t get mentioned in the story, and didn’t even come up in discussions off screen.
“That’s what, for me, felt like the real paradigm shift,” Dern told TheWrap during an interview for the film in October. “Not that there aren’t important stories to tell in which age or differences of experience don’t come into it.
“But as someone who, as an actor, especially early in my career, always had sometimes a very large age difference with the actor I was working with, it was never mentioned, nor was it a story point. But often when it’s flipped, it is a commented-on aspect of the love story.”
According to Banet-Weiser, those comments could be coming because it’s a stark departure from how women are typically portrayed in media.
“I think the reason why it’s commented on … is because older women are already seen to not be desirable,” she explained to TheWrap. “They’re past their prime. I mean, Don Lemon, when he said that Nikki Haley was past her prime, and she was like, 50, right? … He apologized, but he said it because it makes sense for him to say it.”
Carbino added that the attention also comes because “there is a certain double standard” at play, as people think of a romantic relationship as an exchange of resources and services, where a woman’s contribution is “attractiveness, which is largely associated with youth.”
Indeed, a woman’s youth is often treated like a commodity — an issue that’s made literal in Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” starring Moore as an over-40 actress who takes a drug to create a younger version of herself so that she can prolong her desirability. She and Fargeat both earned Oscar nominations for the film.
“I think that there is a relentless pursuit of feminine youth,” Banet-Weiser said. “Like the joke about Leonardo DiCaprio breaking up with every woman as soon as she turns 25. There’s this idea, and it’s rewarded. So men are seen as studs, and they’re seen as hyper-masculine, and they’re seen as still being able to attract the younger women.
“That path, and that power dynamic, hasn’t been as available for older women, because older women themselves are not seen as desirable the way that older men are seen as desirable,” she added, pointing to examples like George Clooney, Robert Redford and Harrison Ford (all of whom are at least 17 years older than their wives).
When May-December relationships onscreen make that path available to women, Carbino says, “It violates all of those understandings — evolutionarily, economically and socially, it’s considered taboo or transgressive.”
Considering “The Idea of You,” “A Family Affair” and “Babygirl” all found receptive audiences, exploring the taboo has translated into success. And when Hollywood is, as Banet-Weiser noted, “trying to build as much predictability into an unpredictable system as you can,” focusing on these kinds of relationships is proving to be less of a risk.
“Lo and behold, women over 50 like to watch movies, right? They liked this movie because it positioned them as desirable beings,” she said.
“I think that when we live in a mediated society, we look to the media to recognize ourselves, and if recognition matters, which it does in this culture, then if we don’t recognize ourselves, it can have an impact on us that we don’t matter and that we aren’t valuable.”
“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” may be the latest in this genre, but it likely won’t be last. While director Michael Morris says the sequel didn’t set out with an agenda to normalize an age-gapped relationship, he certainly doesn’t mind joining the club.
“If we’re part of a conversation that’s a bigger one, that leads to someone saying ‘We should just celebrate love. Why don’t we try that? If someone’s into someone, that’s kind of great,’ I would be so happy,” he said. “Because it feels like a relic, all of these conversations.”
