Pedro Pascal Tops AARP's 'Movies for Grownups' List of Biggest 50+ Moments at the Cannes Film Festival 2025

Talents over 50 made the biggest splash at the world's most prestigious film event

Cindy Clark Kramer,

AARP

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Published May 23, 2025

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As the Cannes Film Festival opened on May 20, it was the stars with seniority who sizzled on the red carpet, making a splash with new films and nabbing prestigious awards. Cannes is the starting point for the year's Oscar race, and grownups are very much in the running. Here are the best moments from the famous faces 50-plus at the flashy French film fest, ranked:

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1. Pedro Pascal proved 50 is sexy

Pascal, 50, whose smash-hit HBO series The Last of Us wraps up its second season on Saturday, stole the show at Cannes in a biceps-baring muscle shirt at a photo call for his upcoming film Eddington, and then stole it again at the next day's premiere of the biker movie Pillion, where he congratulated the film’s star Alexander Skarsgard (who turns 50 next summer). Skarsgard smooched him on the cheek, and it went viral. In the old days, you had to be a young Brigitte Bardot in a bikini to make worldwide news at Cannes. Now the 50-ish guys made news with what Vanity Fair called "the viral kiss that conquered Cannes."

Scarlett Johansson, June Squibb and Erin Kellyman

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2. June Squibb showed stars can soar in their 90s

Cannes viewers leaped to their feet to give a five-minute standing ovation for Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson's film starring Squibb, 95, as a widow who moves from Florida back home to New York after the loss of her best friend. The film explores themes people 50-plus can relate to: aging, loneliness, grief, friendship and forgiveness. It was Squibb's second standing ovation at Cannes: In 2014, she costarred in Nebraska and earned nominations for an Oscar and an AARP Movies for Grownups Award. She jumped to Hollywood's A list in her first lead movie role ever in 2024 in Thelma, which won for best intergenerational film and earned her another Movies for Grownups acting nomination. "I've been working like crazy — constantly!" she told AARP last year, and her Cannes triumph is just one of more than a dozen high-profile roles she's gotten since turning 90, including Nostalgia in 2024's Inside Out 2, the highest-grossing animated film in history.

"People are really interested in aging now that we’ve got an aging population,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at Cannes. “I think people understand 90-year-olds. We just have so many more. I have friends that are 100! People want to see aging. They want to know: What do I have to expect?”

Don't miss this: Meet 'Thelma' Star June Squibb in AARP Members Edition

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3. Nicole Kidman challenged Hollywood to give a voice to the AARP generations

Kidman, 57, won the Kering Women in Motion award, joining an impressive parade of previous recipients that include Geena Davis, 69, Susan Sarandon, 78, Salma Hayek Pinault, 58, Viola Davis, 59, Michelle Yeoh, 62, and Jane Fonda, 87. Kidman seized the opportunity to speak out about the importance of championing roles for older actresses.

“We need to give women better roles, particularly as they get older,” said Kidman. “We are here, and we can prove to you that we will make money for you. Invest in us and believe in us, because our voices are so important. We will help change the world, but we will also give you a glimpse of our hearts and our souls and what it means to be a woman. If you just give us the chance, we are so ready.” Kidman’s recent film Babygirl, about an older woman's steamy romance with a much younger man, grossed $64.5 million worldwide.

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4. Jodie Foster said turning 60 rejuvenated her

Foster, 62, who got an eight-minute ovation for her new movie Vie Privée, became an overnight star at 13 at Cannes with Taxi Driver in 1976, and her career took off — until her 50s. "My 50s were hard for me," she told Variety. "It’s hard to embrace the transition. You feel like you’re a worse version of who you were." But, she added, "something happens at 60. I woke up one day and was like, 'I don’t care about any of the things that I cared about before. I’m gonna go down a different path.' Your kids grow up, your parents pass away, maybe you get divorced. Those life changes are shattering. But there’s a freedom that comes with that. As painful as it is to lose this other identity of being a dutiful mother or daughter or wife, you can also be like, ‘It’s just me now.’"

Her new attitude and consequent career resurgence in her 60s nabbed her a Movies for Grownups best actress award for Nyad (which also garnered her an Oscar nod) in 2024 and for True Detective: Night Country in 2025.

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5. Robert De Niro reunited with an old friend

Leonardo DiCaprio, 50, presented Robert De Niro, 81, the Cannes lifetime achievement award at the film festival’s opening ceremony, to which De Niro replied, “Thanks, kiddo.” They starred in 1993's This Boy's Life, 1996's Marvin’s Room and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which premiered at Cannes in 2023, earning 10 Oscar nominations and best picture at the Movies for Grownups Awards. The day after receiving the honor, De Niro revealed his latest project: a documentary about the lives of his late parents with French street photographer and artist JR. “We’re kind of seeing where we’re going,” said De Niro. “We’ll just keep going until one day it feels, OK, now we’ve told enough.”

Helena Christensen, Eva HerzigovÃ¡ and Carla Bruni

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6. The supermodels at Cannes were still super after all these years

It was a 1990s model reunion when Helena Christensen, 56, Eva Herzigová, 52, and Carla Bruni, 57, posed together at the 2025 Chopard Universe Dinner. The veteran runway models — all bedazzled in Chopard jewels, of course — looked as glamorous as ever as they worked their famous faces for the camera. The trio attended the festival during their ’90s heyday as fashion models and magazine cover stars, and they're still basking in flashbulb light in their AARP years.

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7. Tom Cruise announced when he will retire (never!)

After Tom Cruise, 62, premiered his blockbuster Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning at Cannes, he declared he will continue to make movies “into my 100s.” He told The Hollywood Reporter he “will never stop. I will never stop doing action, I will never stop doing drama, comedy films — I’m excited.” But the decades-old Mission: Impossible franchise really is retired. “It’s the final! It’s not called ‘final’ for nothing,” said the age-proof star.

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8. The movies looked good, but the celebrity fashions were superb

Halle Berry, 58, was radiant on the red carpet in a classic-with-a-twist ensemble by revered French fashion house Chanel. She looked gorgeous in an embellished wide-leg pantsuit that featured a pussy-bow-tied jacket worn open with a bralette peeking out from underneath. Spike Lee, 68, made a statement in a bold New York Knicks–themed blue-and-orange custom striped zoot suit from Cointel with a pair of black Jordan Spizike sneakers, a style first launched in 2006 as a tribute to Lee’s 1986 She’s Gotta Have It character Mars Blackmon. He accessorized with a hat, glasses and jewelry featuring the Knicks colors.