Maggie Attacks Hollywood’s Youth Fixation
Maggie Smith is berating Hollywood for catering only to younger cinemagoers, claiming studios should stop treating audiences “as if they were five years old.” Speaking at a press conference to promote “Quartet,” which is set in a retirement home for opera singers, the 77-year-old star of “Downton Abbey” said she hoped more films for older people would begin to be made to cater for shifting population demographics. “It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see,” she said. “I can only hope that’s correct, because there’s an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others. “I don’t think films about elderly people have been made very much. But I think of [films like] “Cocoon” and “Driving Miss Daisy” and they always seem to be fairly successful, so it’s a bit baffling as to why everybody has to be treated as if they were five years old.”
