With friends like these, he might just get off the hook.
Meryl Streep has come to the defence of Russell Crowe, after he suggested that older Hollywood actresses should not seek work better suited to their younger colleagues.
Having hit out at “the woman who at 40, 45, 48, still wants to play the ingénue and can’t understand why she’s not being cast as the 21-year-old,” Crowe praised Streep for playing characters her own age in films.
The 65-year-old actress has responded in kind.
“The Russell Crowe thing, I’m so glad you asked about,” Streep said during promotional duties for Into The Woods.
“I read what he said – all of what he said. It’s been misappropriated, what he was talking about. He was talking about himself.
“The journalist asked him, ‘Why don’t you do another Gladiator, you know, everybody loved that.’ He said, ‘I’m too old. I can’t be the gladiator anymore. I’m playing parts that are appropriate to my age. Then the conversation went on to actresses. So that was proving a point, that he was talking about himself, as most actors do.
“That aside, I agree with him. It’s good to live in the place where you are … You can put old age on; it’s a lot harder to take it off.”
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