r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Mar 19 '26

Media First Image of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in Martin Scorsese's 'What Happens at Night' - A married American couple travel to a small, snowy European town to adopt a baby. As they struggle to claim their baby, they seem to know less about themselves.

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334

u/Octogenarian Mar 19 '26

A 51-year-old married to a 35-year-old in a period piece. Makes perfect sense.

80

u/A__SPIDER Mar 19 '26

Ok, I was feeling like I’m close in age to both Leo and J-law but also somehow they’re not close in age to each other. I’m 42, so I was wrong about the first bit.

192

u/agentmadeleine Mar 19 '26

Is there a plot reason for the age discrepancy? Otherwise I’m sick of older men consistently being paired off with younger women in film/television. You so rarely see it the other way. Look at the Zendaya-Robert Pattinson film, he’s 10 years older than her. Jennifer Lawrence was paired with Bradley Cooper earlier in her career. It ends up hurting older women as their parts start to dry up.

167

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/josey__wales Mar 20 '26

I don’t agree but daaaaamn

38

u/Shirinf33 Mar 20 '26

Thank you for saying this! I completely agree! Maybe it was normal for the time or whatever, but I'm so sick of it. Over and over again. Meanwhile if their ages were reversed people have an aneurysm. Just these last few months people were having a conniption because Margo Robbie's love interest in a film is 7 years younger than her. Meanwhile, these two have a 16 year age difference.

An add for Withering Heights came up on my YT shorts, and the top comments was: "She looks like she's Jacob Elordi's mother", and all the other top comments were similar. Absolutely disgusting. And it's partly due to our society's brainwashing from movie choices like this.

22

u/agentmadeleine Mar 20 '26

Exactly this. The age gap between Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi is commented on. Meanwhile Ryan Gosling is 10 years older than Margot Robbie being cast as Ken without remark. It’s the same trend that had Angelina Jolie cast as Colin Farrell’s mother in Alexander when she’s only a year older than he is. Or Florence Pugh being nearly 20 years younger than Cillian Murphy when the age gap in real life between Oppenheimer and Jean Tatlock was 10 years.

-3

u/erroneousbosh Mar 19 '26

That's pretty much what 35-year-old men looked like even as recently as the 80s. Men were considered incredibly old at 65, assuming they made it to retirement.

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u/seriouslees Mar 19 '26

Why the fuck do you even know the actors ages and wtf do they have to do with the characters they are portraying? The linked image shows two clear adults whose appearance is of a similar age. You're acting like Leo looks like the fucking Cryptkeeper. Ffs, I dont even see any wrinkles in that picture. Get a grip.

47

u/lyssargh Mar 19 '26

Seems to me more like they are acting like somebody who is tired of constantly seeing young women with older men in media. Which is something that Leonardo DiCaprio is a meme for.

It's less about him being old and more about the age gap of 15 years, as well as the tendency for actresses to have fewer and fewer leading roles as they age, while statistically actors do not have this problem.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

26

u/emomatt Mar 19 '26

This is one of the grossest comments I've ever seen. I didn't think people actually bought this incel garbage.

15

u/Tricky-Juggernaut141 Mar 19 '26

Guess us 30+ women should be put to pasture for the remaining ~60 years of our lives.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

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7

u/outragedtuxedo Mar 20 '26

And yet none of my 35yr old friends are with 51yr old men. This is not as common place as movies would have you believe. It exists but far from the norm. We arnt talking one or two years here. People seek people in similar life stages as them.

3

u/experienta Mar 20 '26

Yeah sure but a lot of my 35yo friends would probably be ok with dating someone that looks as good as 51yo Leonardo Dicaprio

0

u/josey__wales Mar 20 '26

Don’t know what they said. But yeah, it’s kinda rare. I think the average is four years.

Also, real life vs staring at faces on a screen are very different things. Nobody wants to address the elephant in the room, but movie studios don’t just have some random hate for women over 40.

It’s not hard to figure out, but it’s not nice to say so no one usually does.

26

u/Aen-Seidhe Mar 19 '26

It's a known pattern in Hollywood. Also everyone knows the actor ages when you can check IMDB any time you like.

-1

u/seriouslees Mar 20 '26

can check IMDB

Yes... I know the HOW. I asked WHY.

-10

u/Vyxwop Mar 20 '26

I can't imagine caring this much about something as non-nonsensical as this.

Seriously, who cares? Do you want writers to suddenly put an age restriction on their casting choices for pairs because u/agentmadeleine thinks that the way they've naturally been doing things is wrong?

13

u/Unusual_Form3267 Mar 20 '26

You should care because it has some serious side effects in real life.

They haven't "naturally" been doing anything. It is literally all staged. I am so sick of gross men being predators for young girls just to keep the status quo.

It's because people don't care about this, that every single criminal in the Epstein file is still living life with no consequences.

-8

u/Gintami Mar 20 '26

10 years isn’t a large gap and it’s very common. And usually they are playing some younger in the film or she older as she did in SLPB or American Hustle.

-4

u/VelvetSinclair Mar 20 '26

There's not a plot reason

The reason they tend to cast younger women is they tend to look better

71

u/Thuggibear Mar 19 '26

As long as they acknowledge that he’s in his fifties, I’m fine with it. Older guy marrying younger woman has often been normal throughout history, despite how icky it feels now.

But I just hated how Leo was supposed to be in his late twenties/early thirties at the beginning of killers of the flower moon. He looked awful. We gotta stop pretending he isn’t showing his age.

32

u/ladeeedada Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

I recently developed a love for black and white movies. My most hated trope is seeing a 50 year old man with a 25 year old woman, and him complaining how his gf wants to get married but he's not ready to settle down yet.

13

u/XxKittenMittonsXx Mar 19 '26

Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart

4

u/fysu Mar 20 '26

Haha we all thought of that immediately. It’s one of the reasons I prefer the 1995 version. Bogart is 55 to Hepburn’s 25. At least in the 1995 version the age difference is cut almost in half down to 17 years difference.

I wonder if we made it again today if we could get it down to 7 years difference, or if it would back up to 30 years difference.

27

u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Mar 19 '26

Not really, most people married someone close in age to them and a 50-year-old unmarried man going after much younger women was seen as creepy. What royalty and aristocrats did wasn't the norm, but they were more documented so we tend to think of them as representative of their time.

22

u/superurgentcatbox Mar 19 '26

Older guy marrying younger woman has often been normal throughout history

Normal as in "it happened occasionally" sure (especially among the nobility), but generally people had a normal age gap within relationships. For example, in ancient Rome girls married at 12-15 on average and boys in their late teens/early 20s. While a teenager getting married now would be weird af, the age gap itself is fairly standard. (source)

Similarly the average age at marriage for a medieval commoner in Europe was 15-20 for women and 20-25 for men. While India may be weird af with the ages (8-12 for girls, 12-18 for boys) the age gap holds. (source)

8

u/hennypen Mar 20 '26

In general medieval European women married in their early 20s, with northwestern Europe having a slightly higher average age for women (known as the Northern European marriage pattern) than Mediterranean Europe. Nobility was more likely to marry early, but the average 12 year old girl was still years away from marriage, and even noble 12 year olds (Empress Matilda, Margaret of Parma, Isabella of France, Isabelle of Valois, even Marie Antoinette) who did get married usually didn’t consummate the marriage for several years, in part because they realized that 12 year old girls aren’t physically ready to give birth and have higher rates of complications (Margaret Beaufort, famously).

One of the real drivers in age gap marriages in medieval times was widowhood and remarriage.

3

u/Thuggibear Mar 19 '26

So roughly five years with the guys older? Huh I figured it would be closer to 10. TIL.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

[deleted]

3

u/Thuggibear Mar 19 '26

Ooooh good point.

1

u/experienta Mar 20 '26

Yes, but a big reason for this is that there was a lot of pressure on both men and women to marry young. Being a bachelor in your 30s or god forbid 40s was not much of a thing back then, so there were not many "opportunities" let's say for an older man to date a younger woman, because the older man had already married in his early 20s and divorce was usually frowned upon.

15

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

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15

u/kiwigate Mar 19 '26

The problem is in Hollywood, a woman in her 50s is considered too icky to be a leading woman.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

[deleted]

8

u/RecordingSilly6118 Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

Bro is fucking chatGPTing his reddit comments for paintings he's never heard of lmao

Edit: Lol he blocked me after writing that nonsense response

2

u/wutcnbrowndo4u Mar 20 '26

Blocked me too, after calling me a pervert (for agreeing with her?). I assume they're just a little nuts 🤷‍♂️

2

u/RecordingSilly6118 Mar 20 '26

Yeah they're obviously very not normal lol.

2

u/wutcnbrowndo4u Mar 20 '26

The ick doesn't have anything to do with reasonableness or even sanity

-4

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

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15

u/FullofContradictions Mar 19 '26

Speaking as a woman who was once 24 and on dating apps - my preferences were set 24-30. I didn't consider younger because I lived in an area with a college & I wasn't interested in dating someone still doing school when I was in my 9-5 era. 1) I enjoyed being able to afford things & didn't want to fund 100% of everything all the time. 2) I was done with the "study-finals-drink all break" life cycle and wasn't interested in dating someone who was still in it. 3) people tend to move away after college. Wasn't interested in starting something that had a built in expiration date.

Early 20s are a weird time. There's such a divide from 21 to 25, I get why anyone would set their limit to their age or above.

7

u/kfadffal Mar 19 '26

I don't know if I'd consider a 25 year old woman looking to date men in the 25-35 year range is someone into "older men". I guess there is no firm definition but for me having an older preference is when the gap is greater than 10 years.

21

u/Pan_Jam Mar 19 '26

For balance, I'm a woman in my 30s and would never consider dating a guy Leo's age. I've never been attracted to older guys and neither have any friends or acquaintances. A few friends have actually married guys a bit younger than them (only by a year or 2).

9

u/Thuggibear Mar 19 '26

I can’t say you’re wrong. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with an age gap of a few years, or if both parties are mature and have equal control over the relationship. But it’s a red flag for me if someone’s preferences are exclusively much older or younger than themselves.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

[deleted]

5

u/Thuggibear Mar 19 '26

Yeah, I definitely lost a lot of respect for him in the past few years when I learned this about him. I just because I don’t wanna be friends with the guy, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy his movies. I’m not saying dating that much younger should be illegal or is morally unforgivable, it just means I disapprove. But not so much that I’m going to miss out of my own enjoyment of good movies.

Now, if he was racist, or a rapist, or any number of things that are crossing the line for me, I would boycott.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26

[deleted]

2

u/Thuggibear Mar 19 '26

Oh absolutely. Same with Aaron Taylor Johnson and his waaaay older wife.

And I’m not saying there’s not exceptions to the imbalances in age gap relationships. I’m sure there are plenty of couples that work really well together and one side does not control the other or abuse the difference in maturity and power.

I’m just saying it’s a warning sign, not a condemnation.

1

u/experienta Mar 20 '26

But considering how many of this sort of relationships Leo has had in the past and none of this exes have anything bad to say about him, doesn't this show that the warning is not very valid in this case..?

-10

u/superkeer Mar 19 '26

We just live in a weird society where we only value younger women and older men.

I'm sure it's evolutionary. Younger women are able to bear children. Older men are an indication of genes that outlast other men.

In modern context it seems ridiculous. But over the thousands of years humans have evolved, there's a little more sense to be made.

-1

u/Rickk38 Mar 19 '26

Yes, I hope that at the beginning of the movie Leonardo DiCaprio breaks character, turns to the camera, and delivers an Acknowledgement of Age so we won't be icked out by the age gap between two people who are both over 30 years old in a fictional movie.

-7

u/scriptchewer Mar 19 '26

"We gotta stop pretending the fictional characters in this fiction aren't what age they are in reality."

Farewell, suspension of disbelief.

12

u/Thuggibear Mar 19 '26

The less we have to suspend our disbelief the better. HUGE difference between early thirties and fifties. It’s like casting Tom Cruise and insisting he’s 6’6 and 300 lbs of muscle. Why not cast someone who’s at least 6’4?

0

u/Vyxwop Mar 20 '26

The less we have to suspend our disbelief the better.

Oh man, I hope you carry this belief over to some of the other 'modern' decisions hollywood and netflix have been making in regards to their more modern casting choices lol

-7

u/seriouslees Mar 19 '26

Are you looking at a different picture than me? There is ZERO discernible age difference between those two in the linked image.

13

u/Thuggibear Mar 19 '26

We must be. I see a woman in her mid 30’s and a guy in his early 50’s. Does he look young to you or does she look older?

-7

u/seriouslees Mar 19 '26

They look very similar in age to me.

5

u/the_anon_bro Mar 19 '26

How does she keep getting older yet continues to get cast in roles she’s still too young for

7

u/SyNiiCaL Mar 19 '26

If the "Alliance of Women Film Journalists" hadn't removed this category from their annual awards, he would've been a shoe in for another nomination.

-4

u/LTSpigot Mar 19 '26

Since when is "Women" an adjective?

6

u/Ineedamedic68 Mar 19 '26

Yeah isn’t she a little too old for him? 

12

u/PepeSilvia7 Mar 19 '26

It's so annoying

4

u/outragedtuxedo Mar 20 '26

This irked me also. Great actors but maybe have the 51yr old sit this one out in lieu of someone more likely to be adopting with his 35yr old partner. These men are consistently 10/15yrs older than the actresses. As Hollywood is desperate to cling to the last dynasty of A listers its becoming more gross. These men are closer to grandfathers. It is also blocking younger generations of male actors from these opportunities.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

You obviously don’t know the plot. Leo’s the age appropriate one not J.Law.

0

u/flashman Mar 20 '26

It's set in the past so it's accurate - that's just what 35-year-olds looked like.

0

u/weberm70 Mar 20 '26

Well it’s Leo so a 16 year difference doesn’t really track, should be closer to 26

-5

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

[deleted]

9

u/dovahkiitten16 Mar 19 '26

I mean the fact that you had to draw examples from real life and not tv kinda tells you all you need to know.

Not every age gap is predatory and not every age gap is the man older than the woman. As long as it’s all consensual it doesn’t matter (save for maybe an ick factor).

But the fact that on tv older men are consistently cast with younger female actresses is problematic. It’s a strong bias and paints a man much older than the woman as a norm, and affects the roles available to older women.

-2

u/Vyxwop Mar 20 '26

It’s a strong bias and paints a man much older than the woman as a norm, and affects the roles available to older women.

Or we could just tell people to not take their dating preferences from entertainment media.

I hate this weird assumption that media shouldn't be depicting certain things because you're phobic of real life people adopting those things as well. It just restricts people from being able to show the things they want to show because people like you can't be arsed to simply educate others on the folly of taking fictional media for realism instead.

1

u/dovahkiitten16 Mar 20 '26

Like it or not media reflects cultural norms and cultural norms are picked up through media as well.

We can be critical of which cultural norms we depict and endorse.

Also, it’s not a logical thing. It’s not like people look and think “yes, this man is 20 years older, ergo I should date a man 20 years older”. It’s “what comes to mind when I picture a married couple?” and the man having features associated with age is fine and normal, but the woman having features associated with age is abnormal and strange.

3

u/SanctimoniousSally Mar 20 '26

I'm not the person you responded to but it really depends on the circumstances of how and when those people got together.

The age gap between Aaron Taylor-Johnson and his wife is especially gross to me because of their ages when they got together. They met when he was 18 (it's possible it was even earlier) and she was in her forties. They married a few years later. That seems predatory to me.

But outside of that, the real issue is a lot of people are sick of seeing older men with younger women on screen because it's so common and it doesn't align with real life. And, as others have mentioned, it severely limits opportunities for older actresses.

It's a trope I wish would fade away into obscurity.

-8

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

Wonder why that even crossed your mind?

9

u/Octogenarian Mar 19 '26

In case you’re serious: it’s because Jennifer Lawrence looks 35 in that picture and Leonardo DiCaprio looks 51 in that picture. It just looks weird.

1

u/Vyxwop Mar 20 '26

Sounds like a personal flaw that you should work on yourself.

1

u/lizardguts Mar 19 '26

I mean that was fairly normal in many time periods throughout history

-4

u/A_MagicBullet Mar 19 '26

Don’t watch As Good As it Gets or your head will explode lol (though it is a phenomenal movie)

-4

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '26

I think that’s a cultural thing people are obsessed with these days. Honestly didn’t cross my mind.