Yahoo News 17 times films had ridiculous age gaps between their cast
Age gaps, both real and fictional, are a well-worn subject in Hollywood. Whether it’s Leonardo DiCaprio being spotted with his latest twenty-something model girlfriend or controversy over the double standards for male and female actors, the film industry has a major issue with age.
When it recently emerged that Keanu Reeves, 55, is dating artist Alexandra Grant, 46, there was a frenzy over the fact that they are of similar ages. It was, many believed, a sad confirmation of how famous men so rarely date women their own age. It’s so ingrained in our culture to see younger women with older men that, when Daniel Craig was asked how it felt for James Bond to chase an “older woman” (Monica Bellucci) in Spectre, he was forced to point out that he was simply pursuing a woman his own age for once.
Is it really such a surprise, though, that men feel compelled to date younger women when that’s all they see on TV and film? Unless it’s part of the plot, it’s unlikely you will ever see a movie where the female romantic lead is older than the male. And even then, you have films such as The Graduate, which cast Anne Bancroft as the “older woman” who seduces Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin, when in actual fact she was just six years older than Hoffman at the time.
Click through the below gallery to see more examples of the most bizarre age gaps in film
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