Something seems different about Hollywood awards ceremonies. At the Golden Globes in January, at the Screen Actors Guild awards last month and in the list of nominees for Sunday’s Academy Awards, there’s a sense of cultural readjustment. There are not just women working the red carpets and in the running for gongs: there are successful, prominent and, crucially, prospering older women.

Demi Moore could win an Oscar to go with her Golden Globe for her leading role in the dark modern parable about cosmetic surgery The Substance. Isabella Rossellini is also nominated for an Oscar for the Vatican drama Conclave. Elsewhere there’s Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths, Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl, Nicole Kidman in Babygirl – and more.

Somehow, the older Hollywood woman has become bankable because of her age, not despite it, and in the process, redefining screen industry perceptions of “old”. It’s another form of stigma-busting and perhaps the last taboo.

Thriving older women in Hollywood upset the natural order of things. This is, after all, the same business that cast Anne Bancroft, then in her mid-thirties, as the older woman in the 1967 film The Graduate, opposite Dustin Hoffman, who was six years younger.

The industry has even cracked jokes about its sexist-ageist toxicity. In The First Wives Club, Goldie Hawn’s actor character laments: “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: babe, district attorney and Driving Miss Daisy.”

Sure, funny, but also grimly true. For too long, Hollywood women tended to vanish – all but atomise – between the ages of 40 and 50. Presumably, they were supposed to turn to dust or sit next to their LA pools wistfully dreaming of their Norma Desmond/Sunset Boulevard closeup. Now there would appear to be a new tipping point for Hollywood beauty standards. What’s behind the surge of older women star power, and is it all good news?

Certainly, it’s interesting that Hollywood is markedly less sexist-ageist than the music industry. When the Brit nominees awards were announced, Beyoncé, 43, appeared to be the oldest woman within strutting distance of a gong.

Though with actors, one might wonder if it’s more a not-so-golden era of equal opportunities ageism. Tom Cruise, 62, now gets stick for running around doing his own stunts in the Mission: Impossible films (all that unseemly huffing and puffing). Is it that Hollywood women are on the receiving end of less ageism, or that Hollywood men are starting to get a taste of it too?

It’s not just films; women are also flourishing on television. Jean Smart in Hacks. Kathy Bates in Matlock. Robyn Malcolm in After the Party. Sofia Vergara in Griselda. Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus. Last year, Emily Watson and Olivia Williams, both fiftysomething, were cast as the two lead characters in the fantasy franchise Dune: Prophecy.

Whatever’s manifesting, it’s been bubbling for some time, with artists as diverse as Annette Bening, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Jodie Foster, Michelle Yeoh, Sophie Okonedo, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sandra Oh and Hannah Waddingham.

There’s also the key element of cultural visibility. These older female artists (OFA) aren’t hidden away in barely seen passion projects; they’re in big-deal films and must-see shows, stalking across red carpets and bothering awards podiums. They’re not just working, darling – in many cases, they’re doing some of the best work of their careers.

An array of factors could be feeding into the OFA phenomenon, not least that some female actors don’t give a hot damn about Hollywood beauty standards. There have long been outliers, challenging the sexist diktats of la-la land. In 2002, Jamie Lee Curtis, then 43, posed for a magazine sans makeup in a defiantly unsexy sports bra and pants in a protest against unrealistic body image. After collecting a Golden Globe for Sharp Objects in 2019, Patricia Clarkson drawled: “This is what 59 looks like.”

When I interviewed Patricia Arquette (The Act, Severance), she said actors such as herself have to be able to play 50-year-old women in the real world: “I don’t want to be the ingenue for ever – you can’t.”

It is not just happening in front of the camera, either. Actors have long wised up to where the true power lies in Hollywood and have been running their own production companies – in some cases, veritable production empires.

Keep an eye on some of the names on producer and executive producer credits, including Kidman, Elizabeth Banks, Reese Witherspoon, Queen Latifah and Salma Hayek – and not always for projects they’re starring in. The point being that they’re sourcing scripts, novels and materials, flexing production muscles previous generations could only dream of.

Streaming developments also play into it: more content is needed so you can’t just extinguish talent with proven box-office records. Then there is audience power combined with demand for familiar artists.

While culture can feel almost exclusively geared towards the young, sundry ageing populations say otherwise. Older people pay for cinema tickets and subscriptions too, and they don’t want to solely watch people their children’s age.

The downside? It has to be noted that there are older women and there are Hollywood older women, and, even in the era of high street Botox and online order weightloss drugs, there’s a difference.

Of course, there are exceptions. Rossellini has made no secret of finding red carpets stressful and tiresome. Anderson has taken to appearing at events makeup-free in what has been read as a riposte (somewhere between a snub and a world-weary over-it shrug) to her signature full-on glamourpuss image.

Still, to look at some of the more prominent film successes is to see similar themes emerging. In The Substance, Moore’s vain older woman gets her comeuppance. (Message: you can still be a movie star if you focus on the universal fear of ageing.) In The Last Showgirl, Anderson’s character is turfed out of the erotic-dancing industry. (You can still be a movie star if you mourn your faded allure.) In Babygirl, Kidman plays an erotically charged older woman with a younger male. (You can still be a movie star if you sex things up.)

Regarding The Substance, an extra layer of incredulity is added by the fact that Moore looks astonishingly good to begin with. While this is part of the plot, it also seems a statement on what’s required of Moore the actor.

Are some of these uber-thin, aggressively tweaked actors truly representative of older women? Or is it more they represent the only breed of older woman that Hollywood allows? Moreover, why is it that older female actors’ ages, and the ages of their characters, are still up for discussion in a way the ages of male actors and their characters aren’t?

Then there’s the fact that women get all the fear-of-ageing storylines. Where are the films in which the male character goes into meltdown because he’s not so pretty any more?

Such issues aside, one thing that’s coming through strong is this generation of OFAs – tweaked, body-conditioned, or otherwise – really don’t care about the male gaze. That for them, and despite some of the material they’re offered, their primary drive isn’t predicated on male desire or still being considered hot.

This could underpin a whole new chapter on female ageing and beauty standards in Hollywood: one that’s all about the work and creative self-fulfilment. One in which female beauty isn’t anything to be neurotic about – rather, just another useful part of the toolkit.

All of which is far from perfect, but spells progress of sorts. Plaintively waiting for their ­closeups? This new breed of older Hollywood dames are far too busy.

Read more about the 2025 Oscars:

• Anora wins best original and Conclave wins best adapted screenplay

• Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña win supporting prizes

• Flow wins best animated feature

• Halle Berry ‘pays back’ Adrien Brody for 2003 Oscars kiss