Best Actor/Actress Ratios at the Oscars
Best Actor/Actress Ratios at the Oscars
May 21, 2026, 9:31 pm
Filed under: age, American, feminism, movies | Tags: awards, Best Actor, Best Actress, sexism, The Academy Awards, The Oscars
There was an article in the Hollywood Reporter about the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars and how they get distributed. In it, I learned that there has only ever been ONE Best Actor winner under 30. One! And there have been 33 Best Actress winners under 30.
I wish I were surprised to learn that young women are the preferred variety of woman. I know. I’ve always known. I was a little frantic as a young woman to achieve any kind of acting success early because I felt very acutely how small my window was.
What surprised me was how few young men were awarded this prize. It’s clear that there’s a sense that men get better with age, that the Academy wishes to award men for their accumulated accomplishments, to honor men who are really men, no longer boys. But girls, particularly girls playing sex workers, are expected to show up, look pretty for a handful of years and then fade away. The numbers are chilling.
But of course it makes sense, given the content available for these actors. The roles for men get better and more complex as they age. The roles for women disappear — or just become generic.
We watched the Star Wars show that was on a lot of critics’ Best TV of 2025 list. It featured two of the best actors around, Fiona Shaw and Kathryn Hunter. They both play mothers and they are both criminally under used. They did a lot with the little that they were given but they were not given much. On top of that, I kept ranting “You have Fiona Shaw and Kathryn Hunter in the same show and you did not write them a scene together? What’s WRONG with you people?!” What an absolute waste of extraordinary talent. And I felt that someone needed to put these two together on stage immediately. But what? My first thought was Waiting for Godot — which was coincidentally my companion’s first thought as well. Can you imagine them doing that show onstage? I can. And it’s glorious. But, the Beckett estate famously will not allow women to play men’s roles. So, we’ll never get to see it, not unless they do it in secret and we somehow get an invitation. But also, why is there no comparable play for women to sink their teeth into? And don’t say that female version of The Odd Couple; I swear I’ll start throwing things.
Both Fiona Shaw and Kathryn Hunter should have won multiple Oscars by now and it is the fault of the material available to them, I’m sure. No one is producing complex interesting work about women over 30. Well, not no one. But the people who make movies that win Academy Awards (mostly men) don’t tend to write older women the kind of roles that will get them nominated for an Oscar. Thank goodness for Chloe Zhao and Frances McDormand. But still, this 1 to 33 ratio makes me spin out a little. If I had different priorities, maybe I’d be out advocating for young men! Hey, why can’t a young man win an Oscar? Are you guys prejudiced or something? Only giving those things to young women? Where’s the young men’s advocacy group?
But this would be silly, of course, because young men become older men and they can get their Oscars when they’ve matured a little. But a woman has to get her Oscar quickly. Miss your window and you’ll mature right out of the possibility.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on May 22, 2026.
