“Chris” and talking animals overshadow senior actresses in British cinema

To break into the British box office, it’s better to be called Chris or to be a furry beast gifted with speech rather than an actress over 60 years old. This is the dismaying and rigorous observation drawn up by a study by the Center for Aging Better, published as part of the national campaign which aims to denounce ageism,Age Without Limits .

Analysis of the 100 biggest British box office hits between 2023 and 2025 reveals a surprising statistic: six feature films featured a main character named Chris, compared to only five starring a woman over 60. Even more striking, a film would be four times more likely to place a talking animal at the center of its narrative than a senior actress. For the authors of the report, this under-representation illustrates a broader problem of marginalization of older women in the cultural industry.

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Chris Pratt beats actresses over 60 single-handedly

In the very exclusive club of headliners over 60, the recent elected officials can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Allelujah (2023) with Jennifer Saunders, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (2023) with Nia Vardalos, Book Club : The Next Chapter (2023) with regret Diane Keaton,ÂThe Substance  (2024) with Demi Moore and Freakier Friday (2025) with Jamie Lee Curtis.

À the opposite, the army of “Chris” s’impose sans effort. Chris Pratt appeared à lui seul dans trois des films concernés :ÂSuper Mario Bros. the movie  (2023), Les Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) et Garfield, the film (2024). The contingent is completed by Chris Pine in Dungeons and Dragons: Thieves’ Honor (2023), Chris Hemsworth dans Transformers One (2024) and Christian Friedel dansÂLa Zone d’intérêt  (2024).

Older women don’t need permission to exist on screen. They already exist, cinema simply has to adapt.

Emma Thompson

Flag bearer of the campaign against ageism, Emma Thompson, denounced the lack of scripts which have as their leading role an actress aged sixty and over: “Women represent half the population and we are getting older. So where are the stories that concern us? The Oscar-winning, BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning actress believes that mothers are “Captivating” and that cinema must «simplement s’adapter».

An economic and cultural contradiction

This lack of representation would also be commercial nonsense. Dr. Carole Easton, executive director of the Center for Aging Better, judges “absurd” the low number of films featuring older women when almost one in five British viewers is over 55 and generates hundreds of millions of pounds of annual spending in cinemas. According to her, this under-representation is “insulting” in view of the real weight of this public.

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The phenomenon goes far beyond just the cinema sector. Carole Easton believes that older women are regularly “be minimized, marginalized and ignored” in the media and public life. The campaign thus calls on the cultural industries to better represent all stages of life and to fight against social prejudices which are based on the combination of sexism and ageism.

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For Harriet Bailiss, co-leader of the campaign Age Without Limitsthis invisibility carries a major social risk: it contributes to reinforcing the idea that older people “count less” as you get older. In this respect, she reminds us that ageism remains «the form of discrimination the most répandue»with direct consequences on employment, health, social relations, self-confidence and on the subjects chosen by filmmakers.