Carrie-Anne Moss Got Offered Grandmother Role at 40 Years Old: ‘It’s a Stereotypical Story’
Zack Sharf
Carrie-Anne Moss experienced Hollywood’s stereotypical casting machine firsthand when she was offered a grandmother role on the day after she turned 40 years old. “The Matrix” and “Memento” actress revealed the story during a conversation with Justine Bateman to promote the latter’s latest nonfiction beauty book, “Face: One Square Foot of Skin” (via The Hollywood Reporter). Prior to the offer, Moss thought actresses aging out of Hollywood at such a young age was more or less a myth. Then she turned 40, and a grandmother role became a reality.
“I had heard that at 40 everything changed,” Moss said. “I didn’t believe in that because I don’t believe in just jumping on a thought system that I don’t really align with. But literally the day after my 40th birthday, I was reading a script that had come to me and I was talking to my manager about it. She was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, it’s not that role (you’re reading for), it’s the grandmother.’”
Moss continued, “I may be exaggerating a bit, but it happened overnight. I went from being a girl to the mother to beyond the mother. It’s a stereotypical story, working with men that are so much older and aging. And people are enjoying the aging of them. While I’m much younger than they are.”
Now 53 years old, Moss has returned to her career-defining role of Trinity for the upcoming fourth installment of “The Matrix” franchise. Moss reunited with “Matrix” co-director Lana Wachowski for the project, as well as co-star Keanu Reeves. Moss told Empire magazine last summer that a fourth “Matrix” film was “never on my radar at all,” adding, “When it was brought to me in the way that it was brought to me, with incredible depth and all of the integrity and artistry that you could imagine, I was like, ‘This is a gift.’ It was just very exciting.”
Warner Bros. is scheduled to release “The Matrix 4” in theaters nationwide and on HBO MAX starting December 21. Filming took place under the moniker “Project Ice Cream” in San Fransisco beginning in February, and while production was halted due to COVID-19, the cast and crew were able to wrap in November.
