Carrie-Anne Moss, best known for playing Trinity in The Matrix and its sequels, has revealed she was offered a film role as a grandmother the moment she turned 40.
Per the Hollywood Reporter, the now-53-year-old actress sat down for a talk on aging in Hollywood with author and filmmaker Justine Bateman, who wrote the book Face: One Square Foot of Skin. Moss moderated the conversation at New York’s 92nd Street Y on earlier this month, and took the opportunity to speak on how ageism personally impacted her career.
“I had heard that at 40 everything changed,” said Moss, who is set to return to her iconic Matrix role for the upcoming fourth entry in the series. “I didn't believe in that because I don't believe in just jumping on a thought system that I don't really align with. But literally the day after my 40th birthday, I was reading a script that had come to me and I was talking to my manager about it. She was like, 'Oh, no, no, no, it's not that role [you're reading for], it's the grandmother.’ I may be exaggerating a bit, but it happened overnight. I went from being a girl to the mother to beyond the mother."
It’s no secret Hollywood treats men above 40 much differently than women in the same age bracket, but Moss said that it’s “kind of brutal” to witness it actually happen first-hand. "You don't feel like you've aged much and suddenly you're seeing yourself onscreen," she continued. “I would look at these French and European actresses and they just had something about them that felt so confident in their own skin. I couldn't wait to be that. I strive for that. It's not easy being in this business. There's a lot of external pressure."
Bateman’s book, Face, focuses on the ways in which expectations are placed on women, especially as they get older. The 55-year-old actor and filmmaker previously worked as an actress, so she too has first-hand experience of Hollywood’s ageism issue when it comes to women.
