Ingénues tend to come and go, but lately, actresses who’ve long outgrown that youthful stock character are embracing their sexualities onscreen opposite younger men. Nicole Kidman, an Oscar winner who has her pick of scripts, has joined Anne Hathaway, Gabrielle Union, and Julianne Moore in a boomlet of big stars finding success in movies about age-gap relationships. Amid the seemingly endless parade of discourse around the subject, Kidman’s decision to appear in a sugary rom-com with Zac Efron reminds us that age is not an expiration date, and that Hollywood should write more love stories for actresses over 40.
Kidman broke hearts in Baz Luhrmann epics Moulin Rouge! and Australia and bewitched in controversial dramas like Birth and Eyes Wide Shut, but rarely, if ever, does she choose a lighthearted romance. Her next film, A Family Affair, on Netflix June 28, is an offbeat choice that reveals her refusal to give up sexy, romantic roles as she enters her 50s. Here, she plays celebrated essayist Brooke Harwood — think Didion, but dreamy-eyed and wistful — who winds up in bed with Efron’s character, a movie star 16 years her junior named Chris Cole. Much of the awkwardness stems from the fact that Chris employs Brooke’s 24-year-old daughter, Zara (Joey King), as his beleaguered personal assistant. Brooke and Chris’s age difference bothers Zara less than the fear that her sweet, elegant, accomplished mother might fall for her colossally self-absorbed boss.
When Netflix previewed A Family Affair for test audiences, skeptics panned the couple at the center, preferring that Brooke leave Chris alone and stick to silver foxes and golden bachelors. Neither A Family Affair’s director, Richard LaGravenese, nor its screenwriter, Carrie Solomon, who’s in her 20s and has a knack for writing romantic comedy, “ever considered [Kidman’s age] any kind of issue,” LaGravenese said when I interviewed him for a story on Hollywood’s rom-com revival. “So it was surprising to us in some screenings where millennial women were upset by it and wanted him to be with a younger girl that he dates in the beginning.”
A narrative embracing a powerful, genuine love connection between an older woman and a younger man will always invite haters. Off-screen, people often project their own personal feelings and prejudices upon women who flout the rules of socially acceptable behavior and date below their age bracket. We’ve seen this before, notably in The Graduate (1967), in which 35-year-old Anne Bancroft’s wily 40-something Mrs. Robinson seduces 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman, 29 at the time), and in Harold and Maude, the 1971 rom-com that shows Ruth Gordon gracefully embodying a septuagenarian free spirit who teaches her boyish admirer (Bud Cort) 60 years her junior how to live a full life.
In the 2000s, we called these women cougars, a word that I’m ashamed to admit using back then. We watched with fascination, judgment, and perhaps envy as Demi Moore, then 42, married Ashton Kutcher, then 27, in 2005. We grabbed the popcorn, 16 years later, when Olivia Wilde first stepped out with Harry Styles, who is ten years her junior — true to the historical pattern, Wilde garnered the lion’s share of criticism.
In Hollywood, though, what some critics fail to understand is that casting an actress allegedly “past her prime” as an object of carnal lust is a shrewd business move. So is pairing her with a younger fling, which guarantees wider interest and social-media engagement — particularly among middle-age viewers. Unlike an ingénue pushing 30, Kidman’s A Family Affair character offers Efron’s hot-shot millennial a wise, intellectual ear and the chance to live a life filled with purpose and meaning. Kidman is a well-liked star who reached midlife and refused to become invisible. Her risk-taking has included age-gap stories since 1995, the year she headlined the dark, twisted comedy To Die For, immersing herself in the psyche of an ambitious TV weather reporter who seduces a high-school boy (Joaquin Phoenix) and convinces him to kill her husband (Matt Dillon), an obstacle on her path to fame. Her performance was celebrated for its commentary on how a monstrous woman without power deploys the biggest weapon in her arsenal — physical attractiveness — as a means to an end. It is no wonder that Kidman continues to accept lusty material in a filtered Instagram world that prizes youth over experience. Clearly, she yearns to be desired; her fans, aging too, still yearn to see her in romantic films, whether she appears opposite a co-star her own age or younger. Of course, actors like Kidman’s ex, Tom Cruise, have consistently starred opposite much younger women, but few balked on those occasions.
While May-December couplings between an older woman and a younger man always attract controversy, lately Hollywood has paid closer attention, green-lighting a batch of movies that examine the notorious cougar archetype through a softer and more forgiving lens. They are mid-budget, funny, and star-driven. Last month, The Idea of You — an adaptation of Robinne Lee’s best-selling novel — won rave reviews and sparked debate over Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of a radiant single mom who succumbs to the charms of a sexy boy-bander not unlike Styles (Nicholas Galitzine). Naysayers complained that Hathaway was “too hot” to play a mom in her 40s. (Hathaway is 41.)
Curiously, there was no such criticism of Gabrielle Union’s age in The Perfect Find, a charming rom-com based on the book by Tia Williams released on Netflix last summer. Union (who is 51) glows as a 40-year-old fashion editor who falls in love with her boss’s 25-year-old son. But depressingly, their love story seemed to be treated like niche content, receiving a smaller fraction of the viewership and media coverage than it deserved, garnering only 16.5 million views in 2023 compared to rom-coms that feature white leads like Love at First Sight (52 million), The Lost City (21.5 million), and Lindsay Lohan’s comeback vehicle, Falling for Christmas (18 million).
In both A Family Affair and The Idea of You, Efron and Galitzine’s characters are highly successful celebrities rather than ordinary joes, perhaps to smooth over a power imbalance and the discomfort it might cause. But I noticed last summer, when this age-gap mini-trend started, that the uneven distribution of power between the lead couple in No Hard Feelings is played for laughs. In the commercially successful R-rated buddy comedy dressed up as a meet-cute, Jennifer Lawrence’s sardonic trouble magnet becomes an unlikely mentor to a sheltered 19-year-old boy (Andrew Barth Feldman), but it avoids the inappropriate though he’s technically of legal consenting age. While the movie is super-raunchy, with Lawrence nude and stranded on the beach without her clothes in one scene, the chemistry between them is basically platonic.
Later in 2023, Julianne Moore’s campy performance in May December, an art-house drama with darkly comic undertones, achieved critical acclaim, and across the pond, Renée Zellweger is now in production on the fourth installment of the Bridget Jones series, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. This time around, Bridget is a widow and mother of two. Leo Woodall, the “It” boy of One Day and my mother-in-law’s crush, will play her love interest, a cocky 30-something named Roxster.
A Family Affair, the latest entry into this canon, exceeded my expectations with quick-fire jokes and sight gags that capture the zany spirit of the Hacks writing room. Efron, an underrated performer seemingly taken less seriously due to his Rob Lowe–esque looks, really shines. As Chris, his blue-steel eyes twinkle playfully. The character is more than just a chiseled jawline; he stands at a personal and professional crossroads, his frustration making him insufferable. He’s a serial heartbreaker who buys his exes diamond earrings, not rings, to soften the blow when he dumps them. When he spontaneously encounters Brooke, arriving at her doorstep while she’s cleaning the house in an old Blondie T-shirt and shorts (nothing too dowdy or mom-coded), the spark is undeniable.
In another movie, Kidman, 57, could very well play 36-year-old Efron’s mother. But like all good actors, the duo makes their attraction appear natural and inevitable.
Perhaps that’s because Kidman and Efron have already had a big-screen rendezvous. Previously, they flirted in the controversial 2012 crime drama The Paperboy. Kidman slummed it as a southern bombshell having a torrid affair with a sleazy death-row inmate (John Cusack), while Efron’s character, an ex-collegiate swimmer and the poster child for mommy issues, spends a good chunk of the time shirtless and swooning over her. “You got your whole life ahead of you,” Kidman tells Efron in the film. “Do you want me?”
Finally, she relents and they have one-time-only sex, though The Paperboy closes the door to give them some privacy. Meanwhile, it leaves nothing to the imagination in rough, unpleasant scenes involving Kidman and Cusack that should come with a warning label. It’s worth noting that Kidman’s prestige-cinema reputation and regal, almost extraterrestrial appearance have given her cover to take bold risks without absorbing the blame if they fail.
Nearly two decades after To Die For, Kidman will revisit the seedier side of age-gap romance in the upcoming A24 erotic thriller Babygirl, where she plays a CEO attracted to a charismatic intern at her company. Harris Dickinson, 28, was cast as the titular babygirl, a term of endearment and desire generally used to describe an attractive man who is also a sensitive soul. It’s clear that Kidman is still fearless, open-minded, and drawn to darkness, treating each meaty role as though it were a dare. She can summon corporate dominance, wild sexuality, and sweet allure in the movies. Nearing 60, she doesn’t have to prove that she’s still got it — we already know that when we see her in a movie, or in an AMC ad, or on the Met Gala red carpet. But she still loves to surprise us at any age. This hardly makes her a pathetic figure desperately clinging to young adulthood. Rather, it gives her the soul of an artist.
