“A woman does not become interesting until she is over 40,” Coco Chanel once said.
So, after the huge response to our list of Hottest Actors Over 50, AARP’s Movies for Grownups is turning the spotlight to Hollywood’s Most Fabulous Women Over 50 — more than two dozen remarkable talents in their 50s to 90s who demonstrate that age isn’t a hurdle; it’s an upgrade.
Leading the brigade is 9-1-1 star Angela Bassett, praised by The New Yorker for her “innate strength, diamond-sharp beauty, and depth of feeling.”
Bassett herself carries that grace lightly. As she told AARP recently, she refuses to let age define her: “Half the time, I forget how old I am! Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep embracing life, and know that the best is yet to come.”
Her colleagues echo the reverence. Says her Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director, Ryan Coogler, “Everybody loves Angela.… She’s a national treasure, know what I mean? She’s so incredible that sometimes you forget.… Her work ethic is insane.”
Another case in point: former Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson, 58, who stunned the fashion world two years ago by daring to do the unthinkable — arrive at Paris Fashion Week without a trace of makeup and look radiant doing it.
“With so many pressures and postures,” Jamie Lee Curtis, 67 (and also on our list), wrote on Instagram, “[Anderson] showed up and claimed her seat at the table with nothing on her face. I am so impressed and floored by this act of courage and rebellion.”
Curtis has earned her own praise for challenging ageism and the pressures women face, having, as The Guardian notes, “become someone who appears to operate outside the usual Hollywood rules.”
Another quality of being fabulous is knowing it’s not a solo act, it’s a sisterhood. Two of our picks — Naomi Watts, 57, and Nicole Kidman, 58 — have been devoted friends for more than 40 years. These women don’t compete; they collaborate and cheer each other on.
And then there’s June Squibb, 96 — living proof that a late bloom can be the brightest. After six decades in the business, she earned her first Oscar nomination at 84 for Nebraska and scored her first leading role in 2024’s Thelma. As one New York critic quipped, “There are 70-year-olds who want to be like June Squibb when they grow up.”
Women of every age could take a cue from screen icon Sophia Loren, 91, who understood the power of experience long before it was fashionable. “There is a fountain of youth,” she wrote in her 1984 book Women & Beauty as she turned 50. “It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life.… When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”
These women are not in their “second act,” they are in their truest act — bold, wise, stylish, powerful and luminous in ways youth can’t imitate.
What could be more fabulous than that?
