The 2015 amfAR Inspiration Gala Was Conquered by Actresses Over Age 50
Angela Bassett at the 2015 amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles. (Photo: Getty Images)
In Hollywood, it always seems like being younger is better — hence the powerful cosmetic surgery industry and new crop of up-and-coming starlets popping up on the red carpet every awards season. But at Thursday night’s amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles, an event to benefit AIDS/HIV research, the scene-stealers on the red carpet were all over age 50. Sharon Stone, age 57, Angela Bassett, age 57, and Jamie Lee Curtis, age 56, plunged their necklines, rocked the flashy costume masks, and glossed their lips amidst an ubiquitous crowd of PYTs.
Sharon Stone at the 2015 amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles. (Photo: Getty Images)
Stone emceed the gala auction, wearing a see-through lace top, a tuxedo jacket, and stilettos along with her jagged pixie crop and glossy pink lips. In August 2015, the actress posed completely nude in Harper’s Bazaar. “I’m aware that my ass looks like a bag of flapjacks,” she told the magazine. “But I’m not trying to be the best-looking broad in the world. At a certain point you start asking yourself, ‘What really is sexy?’ It’s not just the elevation of your boobs. It’s being present and having fun and liking yourself enough to like the person that’s with you.”
Bassett, well known for her work on American Horror Story, opted for a dramatic crystal-encrusted black masquerade mask, merlot lips, and a plunging strapless black-and-white gown. In 2009, she told The Guardian that she was selective about the characters she portrayed, prioritizing real-life African American women: “This is a career about images. It’s celluloid; they last forever,” she said. “I’m a black woman from America. My people were slaves in America, and even though we’re free on paper and in law, I’m not going to allow you to enslave me on film, in celluloid, for all to see. And to cross the water, to countries where people will never meet people who look like me. So it becomes a bigger thing than me just becoming a movie star, and me just being on TV.”
Jamie Lee Curtis at the 2015 amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles. (Photo: Getty Images)
Curtis also paired her ensemble with a jazzy masquerade mask, keeping her makeup bare and signature pixie crop naturally silver. Very comfortable in her own skin, back in 2002, at the age of 43, she told More magazine that she would only be photographed with no makeup, no hairstyling, and wearing only a bra and underwear. “There’s a reality to the way I look without my clothes on,” she told the magazine. “I don’t have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I’ve got back fat. People assume that I’m walking around in little spaghetti-strap dresses. It’s insidious — Glam Jamie, the Perfect Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah, blah. And I don’t want the unsuspecting forty-year-old women of the world to think that I’ve got it going on. It’s such a fraud. And I’m the one perpetuating it.”
From Monica Bellucci becoming a Bond Girl at age 51 to Allison Janey winning the Best Supporting Actress award at the Emmys at age 55, 2015 has been the year of the older women in Hollywood — and we’re hoping that this isn’t just a trend.
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