When a new American series casts a 60-year-old woman and a 70-year-old man as newlyweds, it throws a familiar absence in Hindi cinema into relief. The Economic Times commentary uses Newlyweds, in which Tea Leoni and Tim Daly play seniors who meet on a blind date and marry six weeks later, to ask why Indian screens so rarely do the same. A quoted line from the show underlines the tone: they are “Romeo and Juliet” with “retirement funds” and “bifocals.”
The exceptions are few
Hema Malini was in her fifties when she appeared opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Baghban (2003), the Hindi film most often cited in this discussion. In 2023, the Malayalam film Pookkaalam paired Vijayaraghavan and KPAC Leela in another rare senior romance. The commentary’s point is that these titles stand out because the wider slate does not look like them.
A star system that will not age
The deeper problem is structural. Most veteran male stars who still carry commercial films prefer not to play characters their own age. Bachchan is the exception: after a decade of missteps, he changed track in 2000 and began working with adventurous writer-directors. Other leading men, the piece argues, extend that discomfort to romances with co-stars of their own age. The cost falls hardest on women, who are pushed into supporting and character roles earlier. Once producers will not back a romance led by a senior actress, writers stop imagining one, and the scarcity becomes self-perpetuating.
Hollywood offers a steady counter-example
The piece is careful not to present Hollywood as a paradise for women, but it points to a meaningful difference in output. Over the past decade, American film and television have regularly centred older performers across genres:
- Senior-led US titles: Grace and Frankie, Our Souls at Night, Hacks, The Good Fight and A Man on the Inside.
- Indian counterparts: Baghban (2003) and Pookkaalam (2023) remain among the few widely cited older romances.
- The structural price: fewer age-appropriate leads shrink scripts for both women and older men.
The cultural frame
What makes the difference, the commentary suggests, is not only industry insecurity. Indian popular entertainment also mirrors a social reflex that treats parents and grandparents as extensions of the family’s needs—retirees, counsellors, babysitters—rather than as people with desires, careers and intimate lives of their own. The four ashramas named in Hindu scripture—brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha and sanyas—are offered as one frame for how deeply that expectation runs, across communities and into the assumptions that govern film and television.
The practical question for audiences is simple: the next time a senior character appears, notice whether the script gives that person an inner life or only a function. For producers and writers, the harder work is to create roles for specific veteran women rather than waiting for a male star to approve an age-appropriate romance. The examples are sparse, but they show the stories are possible.
Source: The Economic Times
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