Earlier this year I surmised in this column that things may be changing for older actors (especially female) who seem historically to have fewer and fewer opportunities as they age. I wrote about a quartet of older actors starring in the popular film Book Club. Of course these were all “A” list actors and box office catnip (Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton, and Mary Steenburgen).
What about those working actors who have not been profiled on 60 Minutes or featured on the cover of People?
Last month I had the pleasure of seeing the Primary Stages at the Cherry Lane Theater (NYC) production of Final Follies, a collection of three plays from the canon of A.R. Gurney, who died last year. The middle play, The Rape of Bunny Stuntz, featured Deborah Rush. While Ms. Rush may not be a household name, she’s recognizable to anyone who has owned a television for the past 30 years or been to the movies. The eponymous title character, played by Ms. Rush, is an efficient suburban matron chairing an evening meeting, and finding that she has to cope with a strange, offstage intruder who claims he knows her.
Before I say anything else, Ms. Rush gave an excellent performance.
One of the pitfalls of working in Creative Aging AND being an older adult myself, is that instead of being “age blind,” I’m hyperaware of the ages of other people (complicating this is my total inability to intuit someone’s age based on how they look).
I recognized Ms. Rush immediately and had no trouble buying into her portrayal of the type A, driven, but always smiling, housewife, complete with floral shirtdress and bouffant pageboy. The play was written in 1965, and while there were no details indicating period, it would be easy to believe this character would have the same hairstyle today.
Due to the above-mentioned hyper-curiosity I Googled Ms. Rush and found her chronological age to be 64. Here’s where one could say, ”she looks great for 64,” except that I have absolutely no idea of what someone who is 64 is supposed to look like. However, I was curious enough to look up the original script which describes the character of Bunny as “about 35”.
What this brings up for me is the belief that casting should disregard someone’s actual age and should be based on answering the question, “Is this person believable as the character and do they have the talent to pull it off?” (Here, I’m bypassing the less artistic concerns such as, “is this an actor whose salary you can afford?” “is he/she a pain in the butt to work with?” and “is he sleeping with the director?”)
I know that in the commercial end of the film and theater businesses, the current wisdom is that stars = box office. But we’ve seen enough exceptions to know that there’s no substitute for talent. Case in point: See portion in red above.
