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On coming back to Hollywood after having her kids:

If you're a woman and especially if you're not 25, Hollywood is pretty cut-throat. I was very realistic about the fact that there might not be any more room for me. I definitely knew I had lost my place when I left.

Top female actors in particular - fantasies projected on the big screens of our imagination - must always appear as a feminine ideal. Of child-bearing age, they should be the image of fertility but just not be mothers yet, complying with the image of eternal jeune fille. Top actresses try to make that moment last as long as possible before entering that other world where they'll only be considered for less interesting parts: that of mature women. There seems to be no room in Hollywood cinema for a sexy 40-50 year-old wife and mother in the leading part of a film.

Yesterday morning's article in the LA Times was a lament on the lack of films that appeal to women but morphed into an obit on the careers of Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz, two thirty something actresses who in any other industry would be still on an upwards career trajectory. More than anything else the story is just another indication on how pathetic a world it is for women working in Hollywood today.

It wasn't too long ago that Paltrow was the reigning queen of class. She has an Oscar, yet she's made some bad choices (I still can't forgive her for Shallow Hal), had some kids, and did the most horrible thing possible and actually aged. Now she's back, not as the star but as the sidekick assistant of Robert Downey Jr. (a guy who was written off so many times yet still get chances to come back). I can't necessarily blame her for taking the job, since she probably got paid pretty well and didn't have to work much. But still. She's a very good actress and she's still relatively young...so is Pepper Potts the roles she's doomed to play?

Cameron Diaz has been in some very funny movies and is very charming and likable onscreen. As the article says her new movie What Happens in Vegas with Ashton Kutcher has them evenly matched as co-stars. It probably helps the case that the script was written by a woman, Dana Fox. But an agent told Rachel Abramowitz (who wrote the article) that Diaz' problem is that she is stuck in the "woman-girl syndrome" like Melanie Griffith and Meg Ryan before her.

What the fuck is that? A "woman-girl syndrome?" I can't believe that someone could say that with a straight face and that a reporter would let them get away with that. That's just a load of crap. Would anyone say that about a male actor? He's caught in the man-boy syndrome? Oh right, yeah they are. They're all caught in the boy-male syndrome! And you know what? the boy-man syndrome seems to pay off in dividends for the guys. Have you been to a comedy recently where the guy acts like a man? Please, the double standard is beyond pathetic.

When the box office fire cools, what are actresses like Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz to do?