Thomas’s fear of invisibility

Kristin Scott Thomas is worried about growing old in an industry that prizes youth, said Sheryl Garratt in The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.). “When you’re my age,” says the 53-year-old actress, “you’re invariably in a supporting role, so there’s often a young woman in her 20s or early 30s who is the lead, and you’re constantly put next to them. You’re watching yourself get old, on a screen that hides nothing.” This is why, she thinks, so many of her peers have undergone plastic surgery. “At the Cannes film festival I got such a shock. I saw lots of my contemporaries there this year, all looking so beautiful and gorgeous and healthy, and I just felt like an old ragbag next to them.” But it’s not just the movie business that’s tough on middle-aged women. The English Patient star says she also feels increasingly invisible in everyday life. “I’m not talking about in a private setting, at a dinner party or anything. But when you’re walking down the street, you get bumped into, people slam doors in your face-—they just don’t notice you. Somehow, you just vanish. It’s a cliché, but men grow in gravitas as they get older, while women just disappear.”

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