New Roles for Actresses are Deja Vu All Over Again

By Katey Rich

There's just too many original roles for older female actresses out there! Today we've got two announced projects with totally unique ideas-- one in which a middle-aged woman (probably Julianne Moore) has a nervous breakdown when her husband, shockingly, cheats on her with another woman. And in another project, a thirty-something woman falls for-- get this!-- a younger man.

Sorry for such a heavy dose of sarcasm so early in the morning. The first project earning my eye-rolling is The Privates Lives of PIppa Lee, an Elevation Filmworks and Plan B Entertainment production starring Moore, Robin Wright Penn and Winona Ryder. The second is a spec script titled Upside/Down, written by Susan Brightbill and picked up by Kopelson Entertainment.

To be fair, these projects are probably not remotely on the same scale or even time frame-- Pippa Lee has already cast three big-name actresses, while Upside/Down is probably still undergoing rewrites. Still, on a slow announcements day-- only one day until the strike!-- they jump out at me in a particularly irksome clump. We've all seen Julianne Moore (or other capable actresses) have nervous breakdowns as a result of marital infidelity. And we've seen somewhat fewer, but heard plenty of talk about, May-December romances involving an older woman (Demi and Ashton being our living example of the appeal). With Oscar bloggers already seriously debating whether or not there are any real contenders for the Supporting Actress categories this year, do we need the upcoming projects to keep sticking women in the same old, same old ghetto? Jason Statham gets to reprise his role in Crank but women can't be anything but lovestruck or victims-- or lovestruck victims, for that matter.