Television led with shows like Mare of Easttown (Kate Winslet), but cinema is following. Think of Isabelle Huppert in Elle (60) or Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter (47, but playing a complex, unlikeable academic). These roles are not about being likable. They are about being real . Mature women are now allowed to be greedy, jealous, selfish, brilliant, and broken—all the moral complexity previously reserved for the likes of Al Pacino or Robert De Niro.
" (2024), published in the European Journal of Women's Studies .