In January 2007, Entertainment Weekly magazine featured a cover story about three Academy Award nominees for Best Actress—Meryl Streep (age 57), Judy Densch (age 72), and Helen Mirren (age 61)—with a cover tagline that proclaimed “The Silver Foxes Rule!” This theme continued inside, with the article focusing in large part on how old these three women were, relative to previous winners, and the perceived Hollywood bias in favor of younger actresses. This discussion persists in one form or another to this day. In March 2023, the website Gold Derby discussed the ages of the actor/actress nominees for the upcoming 2023 awards and noted, “Even though the industry and the Oscars have historically favored the young, especially when it comes to women, things have been trending in the opposite direction the past few years.” What does the data say?
ceremony decade category name age title
ceremony: year the ceremony was helddecade: decade, e.g. 1980s and 2020scategory: Oscar category (Best Actor, Best Actress,
Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress)name : winner’s nameage : winner’s age at the time of their win (at the
ceremony)title : title of the movie(s) for which the winner was
nominatedRows: 366
Columns: 6
$ ceremony <dbl> 1929, 1929, 1930, 1930, 1930, 1930, 1931, 1931, 1932, 1932, 1…
$ decade <chr> "1920s-30s", "1920s-30s", "1920s-30s", "1920s-30s", "1920s-30…
$ category <chr> "Best Actor", "Best Actress", "Best Actor", "Best Actor", "Be…
$ name <chr> "Emil Jannings", "Janet Gaynor", "Warner Baxter", "George Arl…
$ age <dbl> 44, 22, 41, 62, 37, 30, 53, 62, 35, 47, 32, 34, 26, 34, 31, 4…
$ title <chr> "The Last Command, The Way of All Flesh", "7th Heaven, Street…# A tibble: 6 × 6
ceremony decade category name age title
<dbl> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <chr>
1 1929 1920s-30s Best Actor Emil Jannings 44 The Last Command, The Way…
2 1929 1920s-30s Best Actress Janet Gaynor 22 7th Heaven, Street Angel,…
3 1930 1920s-30s Best Actor Warner Baxter 41 In Old Arizona
4 1930 1920s-30s Best Actor George Arliss 62 Disraeli
5 1930 1920s-30s Best Actress Mary Pickford 37 Coquette
6 1930 1920s-30s Best Actress Norma Shearer 30 The Divorcee # A tibble: 6 × 6
ceremony decade category name age title
<dbl> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <chr>
1 2022 2020s Supporting Actor Troy Kotsur 53 CODA
2 2022 2020s Supporting Actress Ariana DeBose 31 West Side Story
3 2023 2020s Best Actor Brendan Fraser 54 The Whale
4 2023 2020s Best Actress Michelle Yeoh 60 Everything Everywhe…
5 2023 2020s Supporting Actor Ke Huy Quan 51 Everything Everywhe…
6 2023 2020s Supporting Actress Jamie Lee Curtis 64 Everything Everywhe…