There’s been a lot of age discourse around this year’s Academy Awards, especially after 25-year-old Mikey Madison won Best Actress and 51-year-old Adrien Brody won Best Actor.
Adrien Brody beat out Timothée Chalamet for his win for The Brutalist — preventing Timmy from taking Adrien’s own record as the youngest person to win Best Actor, which he scored in 2003 at the age of 29 for The Pianist.
Mikey Madison, meanwhile, won for Anora, beat Demi Moore and her first nomination at age 62.
People were quick to notice how Mikey winning was eerily similar to the plot of The Substance, the movie Demi was nominated for.
Others pointed out that Adrien and Mikey’s wins together highlighted Hollywood’s ageism.
Many noticed that the age divide is actually a pattern with the Academy Awards.
One Reddit user even made a handy graph tracking the age distribution of Best Actor and Best Actress winners over the last 50 years.
It got me curious about the ages of the winners in each category, so I went on a deep dive. It turns out Adrien Brody is literally the only person to win Best Actor before age 30.
The next youngest person to win Best Actor was Richard Dreyfuss, who was 30 when he won for The Goodbye Girl in 1978.
The youngest person to win a Best Actress Academy Award, meanwhile, was Marlee Matlin, who won in 1987 at the age of 21 for Children of a Lesser God.
The difference is striking, and a damning example of the way men are seen as more valuable with age, while women’s value is seen to decrease.