The ‘Half Your Age Plus 7′ Golden Rule
In “Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t” (vulture.com) the ages of leading actors and actresses on the release date of popular Hollywood movies depict an unmistakable trend: as male actors gain years on the silver screen, (as shown in a smooth upward line) their love interests’ ages appear to stabilize mainly around the early-twenties to mid-thirties. Looks like the ‘half your age plus 7′ rule doesn’t always apply in on-screen romances, especially if you’re male. (We’ll have to dig further into the creation of that rule, and why we think that that specific age difference is the last frontier before it gets ‘creepy’, but that’s a whole other can of worms).
Photo: Jack Nicholson (60) and Helen Hunt (34) in As Good As It Gets (1997) (Rotten Tomatoes)