For decades, Hollywood operated on a cruel arithmetic: a man’s value accrued with age, while a woman’s expired somewhere around her 35th birthday. The narrative was stark. Once a female star passed the “ingénue” threshold, her on-screen choices dwindled to caricatures—the nagging wife, the cold mother-in-law, or the comic-relief grandmother. The message was clear: a mature woman’s story was no longer worth telling.