Hi. I am new to AARP and have been a member since March of 2007. I have led a long and rather adventuresome life since I have participated in groups devoted to Science Fiction and Fantasy in both literature and film since I was a teenager, and have been writing for just as long. It used to be a hobby of mine, but now I am devoted to writing and publishing a series of novels based on short stories I wrote for a monthly fanzine over ten years ago.

I am coming to terms with some issues about aging which I have been confronted with recently. To help finance my SF/F habit I have been taking on background acting work since 2006. At first it was relatively easy because at the time my hair was dyed dark, but when I got sick of not looking like who I was I let my hair grow out a little and discovered that I was prematurely grey (like my father, who was grey by the time he was thirty like Anderson Cooper). I decided then and there that I would stop pretending I was younger and be myself. Imagine the shock I received when the number of roles I was eligible for dropped like a stone. It used to be that being yourself was the going thing, but recently most of the shows on television are preoccupied with pretty young things who can barely fill a bikini, and the film industry has experienced a marked dropoff of projects because of the writers' strike. Like a great many others I have suddenly been put at the bottom of their "desirable" list. That may be a normal thing in Hollywood, but since several actors my age do get work, it must be because they have better agents, or because they belong to SAG, whereas I do not. I'd like to become eligible, but their intiation fee is the price of good dental work.

Feel free to comment about this, but is there an "ageism" standard in Hollywood again, and what can someone like me do about it?