Posted in: Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: ageism, Carrie-Anne Moss, Face: One Square Foot of Skin, Justine Bateman, Matrix 4, The Matrix

The Matrix 4 Star Carrie-Anne Moss on Battling Ageism in Hollywood

Carrie-Anne Moss came a long way, achieving superstardom in 1999's The Matrix and now returning to the franchise after 18 years in the untitled fourth installment, reprising her role as Trinity. The 53-year old actress shared her story about what she had to deal with in Hollywood with fellow actress, now author and filmmaker Justine Bateman, who's promoting her book "Face: One Square Foot of Skin," a nonfiction tome about the ways society responds to women as they age (via The Hollywood Reporter).

"I had heard that at 40, everything changed," Moss said. "I didn't believe in that because I don't believe in just jumping on a thought system that I don't really align with. But literally the day after my 40th birthday, I was reading a script that had come to me, and I was talking to my manager about it. She was like, 'Oh, no, no, no, it's not that role [you're reading for], it's the grandmother. I may be exaggerating a bit, but it happened overnight. I went from being a girl to the mother to beyond the mother." The actress admitted it was a tough transition to process in part because male actors avoid the same trajectory. She also said she never wanted to stay in the business if she felt like she'd have to change everything about herself in order to stay in it.

A Different Reality for Matrix Co-Star Keanu Reeves

"You don't feel like you've aged much, and suddenly you're seeing yourself onscreen," Moss said, adding that it's "kind of brutal" witnessing the process. "I would look at these French and European actresses, and they just had something about them that felt so confident in their own skin. I couldn't wait to be that. I strive for that. It's not easy being in this business. There's a lot of external pressure." Bateman's latest work is the follow up to her previous book "Fame: The Hijacking of Reality," which took a deeper look at the unfair expectations placed on women, particularly women in the public eye like her, as they grow older embracing a culture of surgery to keep up. Bateman responded to those who criticized her looks. "It does nothing to make me happier or free," she continued. "It does everything to tamp all that down. It does everything to mute my life. I'm going to do the opposite; then I'll have the opposite result." When you look at the career of Moss' Matrix co-star Keanu Reeves (who's also returning for Lana Wachowski's fourth installment), he's far from slowing down at the age of 56, still able to lead his own action franchise in John Wick and he didn't play a grandfather in 2020's Bill & Ted Face the Music.

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