29 Days until Oscar
Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 11:00AM 29 is the number of the day. It's also the most common age for Best Actress winners. That's quite something if you consider that the youngest best actor winner of all time was 29 and just a month shy of his 30th (Adrien Brody, The Pianist). The gender bias that preferences young actresses and older men gets even worse when you realize that HALF of all Best Actress winners won by the age of 33. Less than 10% of Best Actor winners were 33 and under. The eight women who won at 29 are...
Emma Stone is the youngest Best Actress nominee this year at 28 and expected to win by most pundits. Stone is the same age now as the following winners were: Norma Shearer in The Divorcee, Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve, Luise Rainer in The Good Earth and Charlize Theron in Monster.
Curiously there is no "most common age" for Best Actors (spread out fairly evenly from mid 30s to mid 40s) or Best Supporting Actress (all over the place). The most common age for Supporting Actor winners is 46 (seven winners).
Reader Comments (6)
I know there is major age bias, but I also really like all of those performances by actresses in their late 20s (though I've never seen Butterfield 8). These ladies were young, but they did some good work. A huge problem is the lack of starring roles for older women, and I think everyone knows that.
Cash -- oh i'm not knocking the actresses themselves. I love these performances too.
You are my favorite crazy person, and your craziness benefits us all. It is startling to think of these women as all being the same age when they gave these performances, and incredible how much each had accomplished by that time.
I prefer when they make them wait.
If the performance is great I don't care about the age at all.
This decade though has a nice set of three winners at 44, 54 and 62. That's one more +40 winner than the 00's.
I like to tink tt these actresses won bcos of their performances rather than bcos of their age, but their youth certainly worked in their favors & one of the factors they won over the competitions.
1940: Rogers' win was quite a surprise, Kate Hepburn & Joan Fontaine were the fav to win. Guess Hepburn was still persona non gratia after her string of box office poison & Fontaine was too green.
1944: Stanwyck shld've won. Period.
1950: Judy Holliday, ano surprise win!! but a satisfying one. Guess Bette & Swanson x ea other out w their career best performances.
1960: Liz won bcos of her tracheotomy. Period.
1964: Julie Andrews won on two performances: Mary Poppins & The Sound of Music which exploded to No.1 box office during the voting period. Perfect timing.
1991: Jodie Foster, I know she has been winning all the precursors but I believe its also bcos voters cant decided on either to vote for Thelma or Louise.