The issue reached a fever pitch last year when Maggie Gyllenhaal revealed that, at 37-years-old, she was considered “too old” to portray the love interest of a 55-year-old male actor.
Ageism takes the meritocracy out of Hollywood, and creates an unfair advantage for someone simply because they’re younger.
Although this may seem like a fairly trivial matter on the surface, there’s actually some fairly poignant rationale for putting this legislation into effect.
The persistence of ageism in the Hollywood casting process has become a fairly high profile phenomenon in recent years, and this law hopes to take specific steps towards combating the practice.