Actor’s suggestion to ‘act your age’ now an industry standard
Photo: CC AHeron (wikimedia commons)
Actor Russell Crowe’s recent suggestion that female actresses should only act in age-appropriate roles has been widely criticized in the media. Over the past week, sites like Jezebel and the Huffington Post have called out the Oscar-winning thespian for not going far enough to curb the disturbing creativity we have come to expect from the entertainment industry.
“Russ is a prophet of the new Hollywood,” said one industry insider who is associated with a major studio. “We want to carry out his vision and revolutionize the entertainment industry.”
Last week, members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) were in talks with large studio bigwigs to help make this kind of sentiment a reality. On Wednesday, they finally came to a decision.
In addition to putting a ban on age-inappropriate roles (here’s looking at you, cast of Expendables), from now on, actors will be required by law to take on roles that closely correspond to their gender, socioeconomic status, sexuality, and temporal designation.
According to the same anonymous insider, “We wanted to include singing prowess on the list, but we thought that would have reflected poorly on Russ.” According to the SAG, failure to abide by these new rules and regulations will result in grave consequences, including, but not limited to, a loss of seat filler privileges at the Oscars.
To announce these sweeping changes on how the movie business is going to be run from now on, Hollywood decided to organize a red carpet extravaganza hosted by Ellen DeGeneres.
DeGeneres has promised that the star-studded event will be “long, torturous, filled with self-congratulation, and will feature an overdue apology from Dustin Hoffman for stealing a role from a woman in Tootsie.”
For the eagerly anticipated roast period of the extravaganza, a list has been drawn up of actors who deserve censure for playing roles that required an inappropriate suspension of disbelief.
Rumoured to be included in this roast are Jared Leto, for convincing us he was a transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club; Jennifer Lawrence, for demonstrating that she can easily morph into a blue, shape-shifting mutant; Dev Patel, for pretending to be a slum dog; Daniel Day-Lewis, for winning three best actor Oscars while masquerading as historical characters; and Pinocchio, for claiming to be a real boy.
“The message we’re trying to send is that it’s not alright for actors to ‘make believe’ anymore,” said the insider. “From now on, Hollywood is going to devote itself to producing excellence in reality television.”
