What The Uninvited Tells Us About Aging In Hollywood – And In General

By Helen O’Hara

The new film from Nadia Conners, The Uninvited, is fascinating. On one hand, it is a strikingly modern film that has a lot to say about the way that sexism and ageism still shape the stories we are told onscreen, and in fact shape our whole lives. On the other, it’s a talky, contained relationship drama of a sort that is often described as “old-fashioned” or “classic,” and a showcase for a 94-year-old actress who’s somehow still in her prime. 

The set-up is one that could have anchored any film in the last 100 or so years. A well-to-do couple are hosting a dinner party, when an uninvited guest appears and sends their plans askew. But this is not some malignant troublemaker or supernatural haunting, just a confused old lady called Helen (Lois Smith) who used to live in the house and isn’t sure where else she belongs any longer. As the hostess, Elizabeth Reaser’s Rose, attempts to help her figure things out and send her on her way, Rose’s talent agent husband Sammy (Walton Goggins) tries to keep the party on track, since it’s potentially crucial to the career shift that he’s planning. With guests including A-lister Lucian (played by A-lister Pedro Pascal) and big-name director Gerald (Rufus Sewell), there are a lot of unpredictable elements at play, and a lot of ways the evening could go wrong. 

What’s lovely about Conners’ script and direction is the way that she creates a gently rolling pace and lightly comic tone while also delving into serious issues. Helen’s arrival sends Rose, already on edge, into a tizzy: she tries to hide the fact that she’s allowed the old woman in from her husband, but she has a lot going on. She has to put her son to bed, manage the party guests, avoid the attentions of her old flame Lucian and, oh yes, just a minor issue, figure out where her life went off-track. Helen’s reminiscences about her own film career only fuel Rose’s crisis: will she be able to look back with such fondness in years to come?

Rose is an actress, or was before she became a mother. She’s just been rejected for a role on the basis that she’s too old to credibly play the mother of a six-year-old – though that’s exactly what she is. The play that she starred in with Lucian is being put onscreen: he’s reprising his role, but hers is going to Delia, a much younger ingenue (Eva De Dominici). She must now confront the very real possibility that her career is over – and at the same time her marriage is struggling as Sammy hits his own mid-career crisis. She loves her son, but is being a mother now her only choice?

It's a strikingly clear-eyed look at what it means to get older in a town that prizes youth above all else, a town that Conners and Goggins, her husband, know well. Rose is not, in real people terms, even old – Reaser is 49 – but she’s all too aware that casting agents and directors consider her so far over the hill that she’s disappearing out of sight. As someone who prided herself on having built her career on talent and hard work, not just looks, that’s a particularly bitter pill to swallow, and the continuing success of Lucian, and the presence of Delia, drive that point sharply home.

Nor is she wrong in her fears. Hollywood is, gradually, starting to realise that women over 39 may still have something to offer, but it’s been a long time coming. Throughout the 20th century, only one actress in her 50s won an Oscar, whereas zero men in their 20s won before Adrien Brody with The Pianist in 2002. Male stars have always kept working consistently into their 50s and 60s, taking interesting parts throughout, but women’s roles vanished through their midlife and only slightly bounced back in their 60s, when they were allowed small, grandmotherly roles. Consider the fact that Bette Davis had a comeback playing monstrous old women in films like What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962) And Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964) at the age of 54 and 56 respectively, or the same age as Uma Thurman and Renee Zellweger are now.

There’s no question that many actresses still suffer from ageism as well as sexism, and to a greater extent than men. Far more leading roles still go to men than women – about 70% of big Hollywood films (according to the latest USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report) – and many of those male stars are still remarkably resistant to playing opposite a love interest of their own age or older. 

There has been some positive change. Meryl Streep’s continuing ability to open a film has kept her star firmly in place (and that’s after she took time off to raise her daughters at the height of her fame) and the daring choices of Nicole Kidman have made the second half of her career more exciting than the first. Hollywood’s fear of attempting to launch new stars or new IP have also granted unnaturally long life to those who established themselves in the 1990s or 2000s, so that Sandra Bullock remains firmly on the A-list and Reese Witherspoon is planning a new Legally Blonde. That conservatism in filmmaking is not a good thing for cinema, but its one upside is that it has allowed these stars to show that their ability to attract audiences to screens didn’t end when they turned 40, and that if anything they’re doing better work than ever. That’s an important lesson for Hollywood to learn.

And someone like Lois Smith should give us all hope. Born in 1930, she made her film debut opposite James Dean in East Of Eden in 1955 and went on to star with Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces in 1970. She’s had hits since including Fried Green Tomatoes, Fatal Attraction and The French Dispatch. She was an early film star willing to work steadily on TV, including a major role in True Blood, and she’s had a huge amount of success in the theatre. After two Tony nominations, she finally won in 2020 for The Inheritance, the same year she turned 90. She’s the oldest actress ever to win a Tony, and now here she is back on the big screen again, aged 94 and barely slowing. The Uninvited’s Helen isn’t quite conscious enough to dole out advice to Rose, but Smith herself is still sharp as a tack. Her unceasing work should give us all hope that there’s a way through the ageism and sexism of the industry, and still more stories to be told into our 90s. 

Helen O'Hara is a film journalist, Editor-at-Large for Empire magazine and co-host of the Empire podcast. She is also the author of five books including Women Vs Hollywood: The Fall And Rise of Women in Film.

You can join us for a special preview and Q&A on 8 May at Garden Cinema. See here for more details.

The Uninvited is in UK cinemas from 9 May. theuninvited.movie