Home Featured Content

10 Actors Who Have Become More Interesting With Age

With age comes experience, and with experience comes wisdom, so they say. Or so Louis CK says: when people get older, they get smarter. You can’t really help it. So like any other vocation, anything else a person would devote the majority of their life to, actors will improve over time. This is of course an obvious point, but one that gets lost in the shuffle of emerging trends and fresh young talent that nudges out some of the more seasoned veterans of the film industry for the sake of appealing to popular demographics. The acting game is also multi-dimensional, reliant on choosing the right projects, working with the right filmmakers, and being represented in the most ideal way in the finished product. In essence, a lot of it comes down to luck. But it’s also a testament to the work of talented players who have not only continued to work over the years, but put in some of their best work in the back 9, seemingly improving as they went along.

[h2]2) Jennifer Jason Leigh[/h2]

Synecdoche New York

Recommended Videos

She attracted a lot of attention in the 80s beginning with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and continued to earn critical praise in the 90s with Last Exit to Brooklyn and, a personal favorite, The Hudsucker Proxy, but I prefer the Jennifer Jason Leigh from the 2000s and onward, spanning from The Machinist to her Noah Baumbach collaborations, Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg.

It’s these Baumbach movies that allowed her to shine in a way she hadn’t before, playing simpler and yet more emotionally complicated characters than she had in her younger days. Where she once played innocent and naïve, with a face to match, she now has a look that gives off an ironic detachment and a sense of understanding without a need to necessarily say anything.

[zergpaid]

I might just think this because I watched her recently in Synecdoche, New York, where she’s besties with Catherine Keener, to whom I find her similar, and who would probably be on this list if I were more familiar with her earlier work—I assume Catherine Keener has always been this way.

But two movies from the past year further confirm my hunch that Leigh is doing some of the most interesting supporting work of her career lately: The Spectacular Now, where she plays the protagonist’s loving but troubled mother, and Hateship Loveship, which played at TIFF, where she’s essentially the trashy foil to Kristen Wiig’s sheltered house aide. She has always brought a certain irresistible star power to her roles; now she just needs the leading roles to suit her talents, which seem to be at their highest level yet.

Continue reading on the next page…