Actors Over 50 Nab 24 Key Emmy Nominations

Jean Smart, Harrison Ford, Kathy Bates and more vie for TV's top honor

Tracey Minkin and Tim Appelo,

AARP

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Published July 15, 2025

a collage of actors who received emmy nominations

AARP (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Jessica Perez/HBO Max/Courtesy Everett Collection; Mike Marsland/Getty Images; Apple TV+/Courtesy Everett Collection; Robert Voets/CBS/Getty Images; Patrick Harbron/ Hulu/Disney/Courtesy Everett Collection)

It’s a great year for grownups on TV, and this week’s Emmy nominations are proof. Performers 50 and older earned 24 nominations in major acting categories in the 2025 Emmy Awards race. They’ll learn whether they’ve snagged a coveted golden statuette when the winners are announced on Sunday, Sept. 14, on CBS.

Lead Actor, Drama

Noah Wyle, 54, The Pitt

As ER doc Michael “Robby” Robinavitch at a Pittsburgh teaching hospital on HBO’s hit series The Pitt, Wyle, 54, made America fall back in love with medical dramas. He racked up five consecutive Emmy nominations in the 1990s as Dr. John Carter on the somewhat similar show ER but never came home with a trophy. He stands even taller at the center of a show that’s as good as ER and, in some ways, better (and definitely gorier).

Pedro Pascal, 50, The Last of Us

Is this the Year of Pedro, or what? Besides his nomination as a postapocalyptic adoptive-father figure in The Last of Us, which propelled him to the A-list, he’s costarred in two major films this year (Materialists and Eddington), and he plays Mr. Fantastic in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, out July 25. Asked by the Associated Press how he feels about turning 50, he replied, “It is the best time of my life.”

Gary Oldman, 67, Slow Horses

As Jackson Lamb, the brilliant, disheveled spy chief who verbally bullies — and would take a bullet for — the young MI5 misfits he commands, Oldman fetches his third lead drama Emmy nomination. Oldman, 28 years sober, earns Emmy noms only when playing alcoholics: Jackson and an uproarious drunken actor on Friends in 2001. An AARP Movies for Grownups Best Actor winner for Darkest Hour, he told pundit Rob Licuria he thinks viewers (many over 50) identify with Lamb’s sarcastic attitude: “We watch the show and think we may have had a bullying, horrible boss, and you think sometimes, Oh, I wish I could have a comeback like that. He doesn’t give a flying monkey’s, you see?”

Lead Actress, Drama

Kathy Bates, 77, Matlock

People made a big deal when Angela Lansbury was Emmy-nominated for Murder, She Wrote in 1996 — she was the oldest actress ever thus honored. Bates just topped that achievement in the gender-swapped reboot of Andy Griffith’s 1986-95 series about a folksy, smart defense attorney. Bates’ role is deeper and more poignant than the original, and the show is a bigger hit than most expected. She has had four Oscar noms (one win) and 15 Emmy noms (two wins so far, and the smart money is betting this will make three).

Sharon Horgan, 55, Bad Sisters

In a killer show that won a Peabody Award and earned five Emmy nominations, including two for Horgan, five Dublin sisters cover up the murder of the abusive husband of one of them. Horgan deserves kudos as the show’s star and creator.

Lead Actress, Comedy

Jean Smart, 73, Hacks

AARP Movies for Grownups award winner Jean Smart has already won three Emmys in a row for her role as stand-up comic Deborah Vance, and she astoundingly keeps the character fresh, going deeper each season. Who knew Vance would actually (spoiler alert!) quit the late-night talk show of her dreams in solidarity with the protégé (Hannah Einbinder) she habitually screws over? The awards prediction site Gold Derby calls yet another Jean Smart Emmy win “the lockiest of locks.” It would be the seventh Emmy of her career.

Don’t miss this: Jean Smart Talks Family, Grief and Aging on AARP Members Edition

Lead Actor, Comedy

Martin Short, 75, Only Murders in the Building

The key to this hit’s perpetual success may be Short’s antic, tormented Broadway director-turned-homicide-sleuth Oliver Putnam. A former AARP Movies for Grownups Awards host, he’s Only Murder’s only star who has been Emmy-nominated every year, and his recent Screen Actors Guild Award ups his Emmy odds. If he wins, he’ll razz fellow repeat Emmy nominee costar and bestie Steve Martin, 79, about it for life. Don’t expect Short to retire, either. “I’m not a believer in retirement,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s designed for people who don’t really like their job and then they want to relax or they’re tired or they just want to do something else. But I like my job.”

Don’t miss this: Martin Short and Steve Martin’s Best Collaborations

Supporting Actor, Comedy

Harrison Ford, 83, Shrinking

Acting legend Ford has been nominated for an Oscar (for Witness) and five Golden Globes — but zero Emmys. Many think he was robbed last year when he showed an unsuspected gift for comedy as crusty, grief-stricken, rather wise therapist Dr. Rhoades in this high-IQ comedy. He’s this category’s second-oldest nominee in history, after Alan Arkin, 86, who was honored for The Kominsky Method. Ford was also up for lead drama actor in 1923, but his talent shone brighter in the superior show Shrinking.

Jeff Hiller, 50, Somebody Somewhere

Scoring a Peabody Award for his moving and hilarious role as Bridget Everett’s best friend, Joel, in this critically acclaimed HBO series, the comedian and actor gets his first Emmy nomination for the series’ final season.

Colman Domingo, 55, The Four Seasons

After his star turns in dramatic films Ruskin and Sing Sing, the veteran actor shows off his light comic touch in Netflix’s ensemble comedy from Tina Fey, a reboot of Alan Alda’s original film.

Supporting Actor, Drama

Walton Goggins, 53, The White Lotus

A character actor’s character actor, Goggins, 53, became a fan favorite for his portrayal of the vengefully self-loathing Rick Hatchett, whose heart is an enigma wrapped in a murder mystery. Like all of the show’s regular cast members, Goggins has been Emmy-nominated before, in 2011 for his complicated backwoods crime boss Boyd Crowder in Justified and in 2024 for his ghoulish bounty hunter in Amazon’s apocalyptic Fallout.

Jason Isaacs, 62, The White Lotus

For decades, the English actor has helped make hits happen as a bad guy, from Mel Gibson’s The Patriot to The Death of Stalin to six Harry Potter flicks (as Lucius Malfoy, whom Isaacs calls “the blond with the wand”). But what made him a mass-market star was his indelible performance as a rich North Carolina businessman on a Thailand vacation who won’t tell his unsuspecting family that they’re about to lose all their money, fantasizes about killing them and himself, and plunges into a dark night of the soul.

Sam Rockwell, 56, The White Lotus

It was the monologue heard ’round the world, when the veteran character actor bent pal Walton Goggins’ ear about his eye-popping life changes while living in Thailand. Rockwell earned a best supporting actor Oscar for playing the cop Jason Dixon in 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, but so far the Emmys have eluded him. This one speech could put him in the winner’s circle.

Adam Scott, 52, Severance

The Apple TV+ futuristic mind-bender got more mind-bending in its second season, and Scott as severed corporate drone Mark Scout may have had the toughest acting challenge of them all, as he concluded the season playing his “innie” and “outie” in a high-stakes real-time confrontation. Scott was nominated for the role in 2022, losing to Squid Games’ Lee Jung-jae, 52.

James Marsden, 51, Paradise

Hulu’s political thriller is a surprising Emmy magnet this season, and that includes a nomination for Marsden, who plays U.S. President Cal Bradford, whose murder kicks off the intrigue and who is seen alive only in flashbacks.

John Turturro, 68, Severance

One of the Coen Brothers’ favorites (most famously as preening bowler Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski), Turturro is back on the Emmy shortlist for playing Irving Bailiff, the gently courageous coworker in Apple TV+’s creepy prestige thriller. He was nominated in the show’s debut season in 2022, losing to The Morning Show’s Billy Crudup, 57. This would be his second Emmy win, after a 2004 guest-actor triumph as Adrian’s brother Ambrose on Monk.

Supporting Actress, Drama

Patricia Arquette, 57, Severance

As the creepy corporate hack Harmony Cobel in the Apple TV+ hit that got more Emmy nominations (27) than any show, Arquette created a character both terrifying and somehow, by the conclusion of Season 2, sympathetic. Arquette was nominated for the role in 2022 for the first season but lost to Ozark’s Julia Garner. But she won a lead drama Emmy in 2005 for Medium and for supporting actress in 2019 for The Act, and this could be her year to win again.

Parker Posey, 56, The White Lotus

More memed than perhaps any other cast member of HBO’s third season of The White Lotus, indie darling (and Christopher Guest film regular) Posey gets her first Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series for her caftan-clad, pill-popping North Carolina matriarch Victoria Ratliffe. (Yes, it’s a drama. Yes, she was utterly hilarious.)

Julianne Nicholson, 54, Paradise

Nicholson is noted for stunning performances in devastatingly sad dramas like Mare of Easttown, which landed her an Emmy nomination. Now she gets another nod for her portrayal of Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond, the world’s richest self-made woman in Hulu’s political thriller Paradise.

Katherine LaNasa, 58, The Pitt

Embodying the commanding grit of a shift nurse in a teaching hospital with post-traumatic stress after a blindsided assault outside the emergency room on this HBO Max medical drama, LaNasa created standout character Dana Evans amid a strong ensemble cast. This is her first Emmy nomination.

Supporting Actress, Comedy

Kathryn Hahn, 51, The Studio

It’s hard to steal scenes in this laugh-out-loud Apple TV+ ensemble comedy, but that is exactly what Hahn does as the fictional movie studio’s over-the-top marketing ace. The character actress has been Emmy-nominated for Transparent, Tiny Beautiful Things and WandaVision, but she has yet to put a statue on the shelf.

Sheryl Lee Ralph, 68, Abbott Elementary

As Barbara Howard on ABC’s beloved, Emmy-winning mockumentary sitcom, Ralph was the first Black woman in 35 years to win the Emmy for best supporting actress in a comedy in 2022. Can she do it again?

Liza Colón-Zayas, 52, The Bear

Part of The Bear’s record-breaking Emmy juggernaut in 2024 (11 wins out of 23 nominations), theater veteran Colón-Zayas won her first Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series, for her role as restaurant cook (and growing staff mother figure) Tina Marrero. Will she two-peat in the category this year? Yes, chef?

Catherine O’Hara, 71, The Studio

One of the funniest women in Hollywood from SCTV days to Schitt’s Creek, O’Hara surprised nobody with her comedy Emmy nomination for her hysterical role as the scheming, embittered ex-studio chief. She was the funniest presenter at last year’s Emmys (instead of opening the envelope, she ripped it into little pieces), so who knows how funny she’ll be if she wins?

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Tracey Minkin is a writer and editor for Coastal Living, Veranda, Southern Living, Travel+Leisure, Outside, Food & Wine, Men’s Journal and AARP.

Tim Appelo covers entertainment and is the film and TV critic for AARP. Previously, he was the entertainment editor at Amazon, video critic at Entertainment Weekly, and a critic and writer for The Hollywood Reporter, People, MTV, The Village Voice and LA Weekly.