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“A woman does not become interesting until she is over 40,” Coco Chanel once said.
So, after the huge response to our list of Hottest Actors Over 50, AARP’s Movies for Grownups is turning the spotlight to Hollywood’s Most Fabulous Women Over 50 — more than two dozen remarkable talents in their 50s to 90s who demonstrate that age isn’t a hurdle; it’s an upgrade.
Leading the brigade is 9-1-1 star Angela Bassett, praised by The New Yorker for her “innate strength, diamond-sharp beauty, and depth of feeling.”
Bassett herself carries that grace lightly. As she told AARP recently, she refuses to let age define her: “Half the time, I forget how old I am! Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep embracing life, and know that the best is yet to come.”
Her colleagues echo the reverence. Says her Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director, Ryan Coogler, “Everybody loves Angela.… She’s a national treasure, know what I mean? She’s so incredible that sometimes you forget.… Her work ethic is insane.”
Another case in point: former Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson, 58, who stunned the fashion world two years ago by daring to do the unthinkable — arrive at Paris Fashion Week without a trace of makeup and look radiant doing it.
“With so many pressures and postures,” Jamie Lee Curtis, 67 (and also on our list), wrote on Instagram, “[Anderson] showed up and claimed her seat at the table with nothing on her face. I am so impressed and floored by this act of courage and rebellion.”
Curtis has earned her own praise for challenging ageism and the pressures women face, having, as The Guardian notes, “become someone who appears to operate outside the usual Hollywood rules.”
Another quality of being fabulous is knowing it’s not a solo act, it’s a sisterhood. Two of our picks — Naomi Watts, 57, and Nicole Kidman, 58 — have been devoted friends for more than 40 years. These women don’t compete; they collaborate and cheer each other on.
And then there’s June Squibb, 96 — living proof that a late bloom can be the brightest. After six decades in the business, she earned her first Oscar nomination at 84 for Nebraska and scored her first leading role in 2024’s Thelma. As one New York critic quipped, “There are 70-year-olds who want to be like June Squibb when they grow up.”
Women of every age could take a cue from screen icon Sophia Loren, 91, who understood the power of experience long before it was fashionable. “There is a fountain of youth,” she wrote in her 1984 book Women & Beauty as she turned 50. “It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life.… When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”
These women are not in their “second act,” they are in their truest act — bold, wise, stylish, powerful and luminous in ways youth can’t imitate.
What could be more fabulous than that?
No. 1
Angela Bassett, 67
Iconic
Angela Bassett’s volcanic performance as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It earned her a Golden Globe, an Oscar nomination and instant icon status. It also cemented her gift for portraying real-life women with force and dignity. She brought emotional fire to Betty Shabazz in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, strength to Katherine Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream and quiet power to the titular civil rights activist in The Rosa Parks Story.
“If you’re lucky,” she tells AARP, “your work touches others and you can make an impact.”
In 2023 Bassett made Hollywood history as the first actor Oscar-nominated for a role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to her commanding Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She can embody these powerhouse roles, she says, because she takes the time to cultivate — and fiercely protect — her own inner strength. She needs it for her high-octane role as LAPD patrol sergeant Athena Grant in the hit series 9-1-1, now in its ninth season.
No. 2
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Naomi Watts, 57
Bestie
We’ve admired Naomi Watts’ talent for decades — ever since witnessing the raw ache of her character in 21 Grams and the psychological tightrope she walked in Mulholland Drive. But today we love her just as much for the person she is off-screen: the best friend women wish they had. The actor speaks openly about menopause and aging as empowerment, not decline, and even launched Stripes, a skin-care and wellness company devoted to supporting women through the hormonal shifts of midlife.
“I love being in my 50s,” she tells AARP. “We get to know ourselves better … and we can stop the people-pleasing. There’s no need to give a f--- what everyone else thinks. We can let go of the coulda, shoulda, wouldas and go after what we want — unapologetically.”
Watts’ new Hulu series, All’s Fair, follows a group of female divorce attorneys (costars include Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson and Kim Kardashian) who leave a male-dominated firm to build their own — and Watts embraces that sisterhood message in her real life as well. “I feel especially grateful now for the deep friendships I have with remarkable women,” she says. “We’ve grown up together, through thick and thin. Community is everything.”
No. 3
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June Squibb, 96
Dynamo
According to June Squibb, fabulousness begins with self-knowledge: “It’s knowing what is special about you — how you are different from any other woman.” She’s lived that truth. For decades Squibb worked steadily — Broadway, regional theater, commercials, memorable bit parts in big films like Scent of a Woman and The Age of Innocence — before everything changed at 84 with Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. Her salty, scene-stealing turn as Bruce Dern’s wife earned her an Oscar nod — and instantly transformed this longtime character actor into everyone's crush.
Then, at 94, Squibb landed her first-ever leading film role in the action-comedy Thelma, earning rave reviews and proving she isn’t a late bloomer — she’s a rocket. “I am grateful for the fact that I am still working,” she tells AARP.
How does this dynamo keep going strong at a pace that would leave someone half her age breathless?
“I take a Pilates class once a week,” says Squibb. “I do four Pilates stretches every morning. I try not to eat too crazy. I must get my sleep — nine to 10 hours a night.”
And even in her blazing cultural moment, she keeps it humble.
“I am absolutely blown away after being told I am on AARP’s list of Hollywood’s Most Fabulous Women Over 50,” she says. “I consider it a great honor.” Squibb is nominated for a Movies for Grownups best actress award this year for her most recent performance, in Eleanor the Great, directed by Scarlett Johansson.
No. 4
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Jamie Lee Curtis, 67
Rebel
Once known as Hollywood’s favorite scream queen (Halloween, Prom Night, et al.), Jamie Lee Curtis has spent the past four decades proving she’s nobody’s typecast. A true rebel, she showcased knockout comedic instincts in Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies — winning a Golden Globe and cementing herself as one of Hollywood’s most versatile performers. From Freaky Friday to the cult hit Knives Out, Curtis has built a singular filmography and refuses to play by anyone’s rules but her own.
Her boldest act of rebellion arrived with Everything Everywhere All at Once, where she embraced an unfiltered, unglamorous role that earned her the Academy Award for best supporting actress in 2023.
What powers her current era is radical honesty. Curtis speaks openly about sobriety, aging, identity and body image, challenging Hollywood’s expectations at every turn. “I wouldn’t want to be any other age,” she tells AARP. “I look better, think better, move better than I did in my youth.”
And she’s leaning in. “The bouquet of opportunities to create deep and complex characters only arrived when I had a sense of my own complicated nature and mind,” says Curtis. “The freedom of the mind is the goal, and I feel liberated and free as a bird.”
Curtis received Movies for Grownups’ highest honor, the annual career achievement award, in 2023.
No. 5
Arnold Jerocki/Getty Images
Andie MacDowell, 67
True Beauty
What makes a woman fabulous? “That’s a complex and beautiful question,” Andie MacDowell tells AARP. “Women are unique and capable at every level. We can be fabulous as mothers, artists, leaders, coworkers, taskmasters. There is nothing cliché about fabulous women.”
MacDowell exploded into the spotlight as a top model for Calvin Klein and L’Oréal. Then came her movie breakthrough in Sex, Lies, and Videotape and the pop-culture classics Groundhog Day and Four Weddings and a Funeral.
After decades of steady work, she delivered a stunning reinvention in Netflix’s Maid as a bipolar mother, acting opposite her real-life daughter Margaret Qualley.
But the former supermodel’s off-screen choices proved just as transformative. When MacDowell stopped coloring her hair during the pandemic and strutted red carpets with a striking silver mane, that choice became her “superpower,” Good Housekeeping heralded — and she emerged as a symbol of age-positive beauty.
Still, she prefers to focus on what’s happening inside.
“Your 60s are about turning inward, reflecting and learning who you truly are,” she says. “I’m finally getting things right.… I think the greatest asset of growing older is the deep reflecting you do on the necessity of loving your family and your friends.”
No. 6
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Michelle Yeoh, 63
Joyful
Michelle Yeoh has spent her career saying yes to the next leap — whether performing her own stunts in Hong Kong action films or headlining the genre-bending Everything Everywhere All at Once, which made her the first Asian woman to win the Academy Award for best actress.
Last month, Yeoh reprised her Wicked role as the charming but sinister Madam Morrible in Wicked: For Good.
So, what makes a woman fabulous? “For me, being fabulous means living fully,” she tells AARP. “It’s when you keep saying yes to life … with curiosity, compassion and courage.” Age? She doesn’t bother with numbers. “I just think about being alive and engaged in the moment,” she says.
That joy is her engine. “It’s movement and stillness, strength and softness,” she says. “I exercise, meditate, go outdoors and enjoy a delicious meal with a glass of wine, with good laughter, with the company I love.”
Work is fuel too: “Being surrounded by passionate, creative people keeps me wanting to make more meaningful films.”
Her favorite part of this chapter? Clarity. “You start to understand what truly matters: … the people, the moments and the purpose.” Every triumph, every scar, every joy has brought her here. “Life becomes more meaningful when you stop counting the years and start valuing the journey.”
Yeoh won best actress at the Movies for Grownups Awards in 2023.
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