Men named Chris or talking animals more likely to be star of the film than older women

More of the UK’s top films from the past three years feature a lead actor called Chris than have a female lead actor over the age of 60, our new analysis reveals.

Among the 100 highest grossing films for 2023, 2024 and 2025, six films featured someone called Chris as the lead actor compared to just five featuring women over 60 as the lead character.
 
Films are also four times more likely to have a talking animal as the lead character than a female actor over the age of 60, our research reveals.
 
Our polling reveals an appetite amongst the British public for more films led by older female actors to be made.
 
The Age Without Limits campaign is calling on the film industry to have better representation of older women in film. The call has been echoed by Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe award-winning actor Dame Emma Thompson who is asking where are all the stories about older women? 

Dame Emma, who has played more than 100 roles in a stellar 40-year career, said:

“Women are half the population and we get older. So where are the stories about us? The older we get, the more interesting we are. I want to see more films centre ageing women, we are compelling, relatable, and overdue for centre stage. Older women don’t need permission to exist on screen. They already exist in the world, cinema just needs to catch up.”

Dr Carole Easton OBE, Chief Executive at the Centre for Ageing Better, said:

“It is absolutely ludicrous to think so few films have been made in recent years that have an older woman at the front and centre. Up to one in five UK cinema attendees are aged 55 and above, this age group spends hundreds of millions of pounds every year on cinema. The representation of older actors in major film roles is so disproportionate to the proportion of older women in the cinema-going audience, the lack of representation is insulting frankly.
 
“Sadly, it is not just in cinema where this happens. In many forms of media, in many different employment sectors and parts of public life, the input of older women is minimised, marginalised and ignored. We must all push back against ageism, and its intersection with sexism, by telling the cultural gatekeepers that we want all aspects and stages of life represented in the things we watch, listen to and read.”

Our new polling reveals that one in three people (33%) say there are not enough films being made that feature female actors over 60 as a lead character – this compares to around one in 30 people (3%) who say there are too many films being made that feature female actors over 60 as a lead character.
 
The proportion of people who think there are not enough films being made that feature female actors over 60 as a lead character rises to almost two in five (39%) when surveying just women.

The figure drops to one in five people (20%) who say that there are not enough films being made that feature male actors over 60 as a lead character.

Around one in six (16%) people say they would be more likely to go and see a film if it featured a female aged over 60 as its lead actor – almost twice the proportion of people (9%) who said the prospect would make them less likely to go and see the film.
 
The latest analysis builds on the Cast Aside research previously published by the Centre for Ageing Better in 2023 which revealed that only one in three speaking characters were aged 50 or over, based on a sample of more than 1,200 characters in nearly 50 popular films analysed between 2010 and 2022. This representation falls short of the nearly one in two UK adults in this age group.

The study, authored by academics at the University of West London School of Film, Media and Design, found that female characters aged 65 years and over were more than three times less likely than men of the same age to be featured in British films over the last decade. Women characters over 50 were also found to speak 14% less than older men in the sample of films studied by researchers.

Researchers also found that empowered, active and rounded older female characters were rare, with older women much more commonly portrayed as passive, pitiable, ridiculed for failing to act their age and often irrelevant to the main plot.
 
The research also found that only marginal improvements within the industry had been made over the past decade and this was largely limited to increasing the number of older characters in supporting roles, not major roles, while an increase in older female characters has been restricted to women in their 50s and early 60s but no older.
 
Harriet Bailiss, Co-lead of the Age Without Limits campaign, said:

“By failing to properly represent older people, and older women in particular, the film industry is actively participating in the pushing of older people to the margins of society. For many older people who have come to question their value through internalising the ageism they see around them every day in society, this lack of representation will reinforce the idea that older people matter less as they get older. No wonder so many women talk about feeling invisible as they get older when they don’t see themselves reflected back in popular culture or advertising.
 
“Ageism is the most common form of discrimination but is still not taken seriously enough. Ageism limits work, health, relationships, ambition and confidence—and ultimately whose lives are seen as worth investing in. Ageism affects all of us but we can also all play our part to stamp it out. Questioning it and challenging it starts with each of us.”