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Women were real box office stars in the '40s, more so than men. People loved to see women's films. I think it was better then, except for the studio system.

Most people are interested in seeing 27-year-old women who are in movies somehow connected to sex. It's interesting to everyone. Especially little movies that are having trouble getting made, there's always sex.

Women over 35 have great stories, and the actresses are there, but you can't get the movies made.

It's absurd: half the movie audience are women, but Hollywood bosses are still aiming for men who are 20.

Hollywood is sexist and age-ist, and that covers all the bases, I guess.

There's still a massive inequality between the genders. If you look at the trajectory of a male actor's career, there's no hesitation or hiatus. But women after the age of 35 to 40 are rarely placed in the centre of the story.

It's weird, because American films in the 1930s and '40s, particularly melodramas, were made for woman, from Bette Davis to Joan Crawford to Barbara Stanwyck to Katherine Hepburn, and for some reason we've taken a step backward in this sense.

People are not used to seeing an older woman on screen, unless she's playing a character role. Why can't they make a movie about a woman who's forty-five who's falling in love or getting divorced? Why does the leading role always have to be a woman who's twenty-three or twenty-eight?

It sounds so negative of me to say, but I don't feel like there were many coming-of-age films when I was growing up. I think that when I was a teenager, I felt really misrepresented in the teenage roles that I was watching onscreen. Especially in women.

When you're a woman in your 40s, it's not the best time to do films, because there really aren't that many roles. Then you reach 50 and there are more roles again. Mother parts.