It’s no secret that Hollywood hasn’t historically been kind to women over 50. The further you get from the age of 25 in any public-facing job (and private-facing, actually, and not only in Hollywood—fun!), the closer you get to being unceremoniously sidelined. Not so much for the 50-plus women at the 2025 Golden Globes, who emerged as this year’s main characters. From splashy red-carpet dressing (Nicole Kidman in Balenciaga, Viola Davis in Gucci, Pamela Anderson in Oscar de la Renta) to the trophies themselves (Jodie Foster, Demi Moore, and Jean Smart all got gongs), this year proved that Hollywood’s weird obsession with youth is finally starting to get a little old.
It wasn’t just that a lot of older women won awards, though, or shut down the red carpet. They were the ones making the statements. Pamela Anderson, 57, has consistently gone make-up free since 2023. “No stylist, no glam team, it’s just me,” she told Variety on the red carpet. (Wild that a woman showing up with her normal face is considered shocking, but this is where we’re at.) And in a sort of life-imitates-art but the inverse, 62-year-old actress Demi Moore picked up a best performance award for her memorable turn in Coralie Fargeat’s body horror The Substance, in which she plays a “fading” Hollywood star who’s promptly dropped from her TV slot upon turning 50.
“People always ask for something new. At 50, it stops,” she’s told by an exec in the film. In real life, however, Moore’s undergone all manner of creative rebirths.
