Contemporaries
Toward the end of his review of Woody Allen's latest, "Whatever Works" -- in which Larry David plays the Allen alter ego, Boris; 21-year-old Evan Rachel Wood plays Boris's wife, Melody; and Patricia Clarkson plays Melody's mother, Marietta -- Anthony Lane ponders what the movie might have been if Allen had bothered to let go of some of the tropes to which he's held so fast for so long. "It would be a movie in which Allen interrogates his own nostalgia," he suggests.
"Or how about a retread," Lane continues, "in which Boris picks on someone his own age and finds love with Marietta?"
Wait a second.
Someone his own age? Patricia Clarkson and Larry David are the same age?
Hardly. Larry David will be 62 in a couple of weeks. Patricia Clarkson is 49. When he was 30, she was 17. In contrast, when he was 30, Hillary Clinton was, too. So were Camilla Parker Bowles, Jane Curtin, Emmylou Harris, Farrah Fawcett, Laurie Anderson, Teri Garr, Mary Kay Place, Meredith Baxter, Cheryl Tiegs, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Jill Eikenberry and Betty Buckley.
Also in the ballpark: Sigourney Weaver, 59; Meryl Streep and JoBeth Williams, 60; Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler, 63; Mia Farrow and Swoosie Kurtz, 64; and Lynn Redgrave, 66.
And male contemporaries? Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Kline, David Letterman, Elton John, Richard Dreyfuss, Meat Loaf and Bob Weir were all born in 1947.
That's what someone Larry David's age looks like, even in Hollywood.
June 18, 2009 7:11 PM
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