Businesswoman and co-founder of GenM, Heather Jackson, reminds you to be the protagonist of your own life, because your best years are very much still ahead of you!
WORDS: HEATHER JACKSON. IMAGES: CHANTEL KING, GENM.
There’s something about watching a film on an aeroplane that makes it feel special. Maybe it’s because you know you’ll be sat down for a while so your mind settles in. Whatever it is, I find that I often enjoy films more when travelling.
Over the last few months, I’ve had the privilege of travelling to share GenM’s menopause vision with international brands and stakeholders. It won’t surprise you that I’ve watched several films during the journeys. It was only looking back afterwards that I realised one common theme of all the films I’d seen: they all featured protagonists over the age of 50!
This wasn’t a conscious choice that I’d made to watch films with older casts – I’d simply picked the ones that looked the most interesting. But the fact that there are multiple options with more diverse age ranges is a welcome change. We’re slowly seeing a difference in the kind of movies made by a film industry that is often thought to be obsessed with youth.
SILVER SCREEN STARS
Three of the films I watched were My Sailor, My Love; Moving On; and Mending The Line. Other than starring actors past midlife age, each of the films had a complex and beautiful truth to share about life.
When asked in an interview how she feels about getting older, Helen Mirren once said: ‘I’m not growing old, I’m growing up!’ This mindset is a thread that runs through each of the films as the characters deal with the raw realities of life, both good and bad.
My Sailor, My Love shows the strained relationship between a retired father (James Cosmo) and his midlife daughter (Catherine Walker) after he begins a new romantic relationship late in life. The performances are fantastic and the script does a great job showing the tension of accepting that your life perhaps hasn’t turned out the way you’d hoped. But it’s the determination to keep going, to keep hoping, to keep trying that really gets me.
Moving On stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, two actors who have been trailblazers in transforming how older women are seen and portrayed. And aside from an
