The most recent study from Annenberg also found that from Hollywood’s top 100 films last year, there were only four women aged 45 plus who featured as a lead or co-lead, and one was a voice character in an animation: Ginnifer Goodwin in Zootopia 2. None of them were women of colour. By contrast, there were 31 men in the same age bracket who qualified as leads or co-leads in these movies, including actors such as Anthony Mackie, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benicio Del Toro, Brad Pitt, Dwayne Johnson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pedro Pascal and Tom Cruise.
“You can’t tell me that over this age on screen, there aren’t qualified female actors able to do [protagonist] roles,” Smith tells the BBC….