Hollywood's love-interest age gap, in one graph

Hollywood Age Gap
(Image credit: Facebook.com/Magic in the Moonlight)

In real life, most of us would raise an eyebrow at the nearly triple-decade age difference between a couple whose ages were 25 and 53. But in last year's Magic in the Moonlight, this actual age difference between Emma Stone and love interest Colin Firth was hardly taboo.

In Hollywood, it's basically standard practice to pair young female stars with much older love interests (sometimes, the men are even old enough to be their fathers). Vulture looked deeper at this trend by creating graphs that compare the ages of three young actresses (Emma Stone, now 26; Jennifer Lawrence, now 25; and Scarlett Johansson, now 30) with that of their male love interests. Here's Stone's graph:

(Vulture)

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In case that graph doesn't make a strong enough point about the rampant ageism and sexism in Hollywood, consider this: 37-year-old Maggie Gyllenhaal has said she was denied a role in a movie because she was considered her "too old" to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man.

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Samantha Rollins

Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.