I was sitting on my patio in Scottsdale the other morning, drinking my second coffee and flipping through a magazine that promised to reveal "Hollywood's Sexiest Stars Over 50," when Frank walked by and said, "You're staring at George Clooney again." Not staring. Conducting research. There's a difference, and after nearly half a century of marriage, the man should know that by now.
But it got me thinking. We spend so much time in this culture pretending that attractiveness has an expiration date, like somewhere around 55 you're supposed to hand in your cheekbones and start wearing exclusively beige. (Has anyone told George Clooney? Because he clearly didn't get the memo.) Meanwhile, half of Hollywood is out there at 60, 70, 80, looking like they've made some kind of deal with a very talented dermatologist. Or maybe just good lighting. Either way, I have opinions. I've earned them.
So here are my ten favorite senior celebrities who are aging like the expensive wine Frank and I brought back from Tuscany in 2018. We still haven't opened it because we keep saying we're "saving it for a special occasion," which at our age is basically any Tuesday we both wake up feeling decent.
George Clooney, 64
Can we talk about George Clooney's hair? Because I've been wanting to talk about George Clooney's hair since approximately 1994, when he showed up on ER and every woman in my book club suddenly developed a keen interest in medical dramas. He's 64 now and the silver has only made things worse. Or better. Depending on your perspective.
Frank does not share my perspective. Frank thinks George Clooney is "fine, I guess," which is the same thing he said about the pasta in Tuscany, and which I have learned to interpret as the highest compliment Frank Sinclair is capable of producing. George married Amal, who is a human rights lawyer and somehow also the most beautiful person in any room she enters, and they have twins, and he still does that thing where he tilts his head and smiles like he knows exactly what you're thinking. He does know. And he does know. Always has.
Salma Hayek, 59 — And Denzel Washington, 71
Salma Hayek is 59 years old and I genuinely do not understand how. Watching her in Frida back in 2002 was a revelation. Still teaching at New Trier at the time, I made my AP English students write about artistic obsession that semester, partly because of the film and partly because they needed to learn that not everything worth studying was written by a dead white man. Salma has this quality where she walks into a frame and you forget what movie you were watching. She was in a Marvel film a few years back and honestly, I couldn't tell you a single thing about the plot, but I could describe her screen presence in detail.
Denzel Washington, on the other hand, is the kind of handsome that makes you sit up straighter in your theater seat. He's 71 and he's still got that voice, the one that sounds like it was designed specifically to deliver important monologues while wearing a suit. My friend Linda from book club once said Denzel could read the phone book and she'd watch all two hours. Linda's not wrong. His beard went silver and somehow that just made the whole situation more distinguished. Some people get older and fade. Denzel got older and became more Denzel.
Halle Berry, 59
Halle Berry is 59 and she's out there doing her own stunts in action movies and posting workout videos that make me tired just watching from my couch. I saw Monster's Ball when it came out in 2001 and I remember thinking, "Well, that's just not fair to the rest of us." Twenty-five years later? Still not fair.
Actually, that's not quite right. What strikes me most about Halle isn't the obvious beauty thing. It's that she seems to be having more fun now than she did in her thirties. She does interviews where she laughs like someone who has stopped caring what the tabloids think, which, if you've followed her career at all, is a fairly recent development. Good for her! My thirties were spent grading essays until midnight and worrying about whether I was a good enough mother. If I'd looked like Halle Berry while doing it, I doubt it would have made the essays any better, but the parent-teacher conferences would have been something.
Morgan Freeman, 88 — The Voice of Everything
Morgan Freeman is 88 years old and the man has narrated approximately half of all human knowledge. Penguins. God. The story of the universe. If Morgan Freeman narrated my morning routine, even the part where I spend eleven minutes looking for my reading glasses (they were on my head, don't ask), it would sound profound.
My years at the chalkboard gave me a deep appreciation for the power of a good voice in a classroom. Morgan Freeman has that same quality, the one where you stop fidgeting and actually listen, except his classroom is every movie theater in the world. He's earned every one of those 88 years and he wears them like a man who figured out a long time ago that gravitas isn't something you practice. It's something that happens to you when you've lived enough life to fill it up.
Diane Keaton, 80
Diane Keaton is 80 and still wearing hats and turtlenecks and looking like she wandered off the set of an extremely stylish independent film about a woman who writes poetry in a Connecticut farmhouse. Which, honestly, might just be her actual life.
There's a soft spot in my heart for Diane because she's always seemed like someone who would be fun to have lunch with — the kind of person who orders something unexpected and then talks about architecture for forty minutes and you don't even mind because she's that interesting. She was in Something's Gotta Give in 2003, which my book club watched together and then spent two hours arguing about whether Jack Nicholson's character deserved her. (He did not. The vote was unanimous. Linda abstained because she was refilling her wine.) If you're looking for senior fashion inspiration, Diane Keaton has been doing it longer than most fashion brands have existed.
Samuel L. Jackson, 77 — And Susan Sarandon, 79
Samuel L. Jackson is 77 and he has appeared in roughly 400 movies, give or take, and he brings the same energy to every single one: a man who is absolutely not going to tolerate whatever is happening around him. He was in Pulp Fiction in 1994. He was in the Avengers movies. He's been a Jedi. The man has range, but the through line is that Sam Jackson energy: part authority, part fury, part the coolest person you've ever seen order a burger.
Susan Sarandon is 79 and she has the kind of face that directors describe as "interesting," which is code for "beautiful in a way that doesn't bore you." Watching Thelma & Louise in 1991 shifted something in my brain about what a woman in a movie could be. She wasn't the love interest. She wasn't the victim. She was driving the car. Susan has spent her entire career being exactly that: the person driving, not riding shotgun. She's 79 and she's still picking fights with people on social media, which I both admire and find slightly exhausting, but that's Susan. She's not going to sit down and be quiet, and honestly? Good for her. We could use a few more seniors who refuse to play it safe.
Liam Neeson, 73
Liam Neeson is 73 and he's still making action movies where he rescues people by being very tall and very angry into a cell phone. After seeing Taken in 2008, I turned to Frank and said, "If I ever get kidnapped in Paris, I need you to react like that." Frank said, "I'll call the embassy." And that, right there, is why Liam Neeson is a movie star and Frank is a retired civil engineer from Wilmette.
But honestly, the thing about Liam is the sadness underneath the action hero stuff. He lost his wife, Natasha Richardson, in 2009, and you can see it. Not in any dramatic way, but in the interviews, the quieter roles, the way he talks about her still. Some people carry grief like a weight. Liam carries it like a room he goes into sometimes, privately, and then comes back out and makes another movie about punching someone. Very human, that.
Here's the Thing About Aging and Beauty
Here's the thing nobody tells you about watching celebrities get older: it's comforting. Not because they look perfect (though several of them clearly have access to skincare products that cost more than my monthly grocery bill) but because they're still showing up. Still working. Still being seen. In a culture that tends to treat anyone over 60 as either a medical concern or a punchline, these ten people are standing in front of cameras and saying, "I'm still here, and I still matter."
At 72, my knees have opinions about stairs. Four pairs of glasses live in this house and none are ever where they should be. Frank and I have been together so long that we've developed a shorthand that requires no actual words: a raised eyebrow, a sigh, a particular way of setting down a coffee cup that means "I love you but you're being ridiculous." None of that is glamorous. But it's real, and it's beautiful, and these celebrities remind me that you don't stop being vibrant just because you start getting AARP mail.
Jane Fonda is 88 years old. Eighty-eight! She did workout videos in the 1980s that my mother Dorothy used to do in our living room in Evanston, wearing a leotard and leg warmers and looking determined in a way that slightly frightened me. Jane went on to star in Grace and Frankie, fight for climate justice, and generally refuse to behave the way 88-year-olds are "supposed" to behave, whatever that means. She once said getting older isn't for sissies, and she's right, but she also makes it look like the kind of challenge you'd actually want to sign up for.
That's the real lesson here. Not that these celebrities look amazing (they do, but they also have professional help, great lighting, and in some cases what I suspect is a pact with forces beyond my understanding). The real thing is that they haven't checked out. They're still curious, still working, still showing up for things that make them feel alive.
We're Still Here
When I told Frank about this article, he said, "Did you put me in it?" "You're not a celebrity, Frank," I said. He said, "I'm a celebrity in this house." Then he went to check on his La-Z-Boy in the guest room, the one with the wounded armrest that he moved from Wilmette to Scottsdale because "it still works." Watching him go I thought, not for the first time, that the man still looks pretty good for 74.
Obviously, I didn't tell him. After this long together, some things are better left as inside thoughts.
But between us? He's aging like fine wine too. The cheap kind from Trader Joe's that you don't expect much from and then it turns out to be perfect for a Tuesday night on the patio in Arizona, watching the sunset with the person who has tolerated you beautifully since 1978.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
