Is Maggie Gyllenhall Too Old?

Maggie Gyllenhaal, who's 37, was recently told that she's too old to play the love interest of a 55-year-old actor:

“There are things that are really disappointing about being an actress in Hollywood that surprise me all the time,” she says during an interview for an upcoming issue of TheWrap Magazine. “I’m 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh.”

Amy Poehler did a segment on this phenomenon with Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Patricia Arquette (who are respectively 45, 54, and 47). One of the things it bemoans is the fact the Sally Field plays Tom Hanks' girlfriend in one movie and then plays his mother in another movie a few years later.

People complain about how terribly sexist Hollywood is, but this is not limited to the movie industry. It's par for the course for wealthy CEOs, politicians and media figures to divorce their first, second and third wives and trade in for a trophy wife every few years. Look at Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, etc.

But to their credit, Hollywood did make a movie about this problem called The First Wives Club.

This practice of discarding older women is not limited to the wealthy. In general, men marry younger women in subsequent marriages. In 38% of second marriages men marry a woman who is at least six years younger -- which makes no demographic sense because women have longer life spans than men.

Some will argue that this has to do with men wanting to have children with their second wives, but seriously, how many men want to screw around with kids in their 50s and 60s, especially if they've already gone through the ordeal?

Incidentally, the stats on remarriage show some interesting details which don't put conservative states in a very good light:

And it's not just second marriages -- third and fourth marriages are becoming more common too. Fully one in ten white newlyweds are on their third-plus marriage, according to Pew's calculations. Bloomberg's visual data team sliced the Census numbers last year and found that Arkansas is the state with the highest share of thrice-married residents: 7.5 percent of the 15+ population is on at least their third marriage. Arkansas is followed by Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee and Alabama. 

Why are men this way? Are they simply emotionally immature and can only handle women half their age? Do they consider their wives to be status symbols, like an expensive car, and so they have to have the newest and hottest model?  Are they insecure and afraid of impending death, and marry younger to make themselves feel younger? Are they faithless scum who value fleeting appearances more than love and loyalty? Is it some kind of creepy pseudo-pedophilia? Are these men so good-looking that they can only find mates of comparable attractiveness to themselves in younger women? Looking at Trump, Limbaugh and Gingrich the answer is obviously no.

The thing is, everyone assumes the only reason younger women marry flabby, old, fat and ugly men is for their money. Everyone assumes that the marriage will end in divorce and a lot of messy court proceedings, custody battles and an endless flood of lawyers' fees. Yet, knowing this, Trump and Limbaugh and Gingrich still robbed the cradle. What fools these men be.

Which brings up the most important question of all: will Han Solo still be married to Princess Leia in the new Star Wars movie? Or will Han and Leia split, and will the producers pair Harrison Ford with a wife young enough to be his daughter; say, someone like Ford's real wife, Callista Flockhart?

Nah. Callista Flockhart is 50. Way too old for the movies.