Fuck fair. Let’s see the graph of films meant to shove a woke perspective down our throats that crashed and burned. Truth is, women achieve social maturity at a much earlier age and tend to find men in their age group unprepared to deal with the complexities of adult life. The market simply reflects the social realities that questions like this try to ignore.

I call bullshit.
Search famous actresses over 45, 50 or 65 and you get at least 40 names in each category.
And since when is Hollywood a) fair or b) based in reality?
It's just another way to cry sexism/ageism, or whatever -ism they want to focus on...

Yes, it is fair!

Just look at Top Gun stars Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis:

it is because of human nature itself. Two major ingredients in the movie/entertainment businesses are sex and violence.
The fact is that females reach their sex appeal peaks relatively early and then they somewhat rapidly being to fade into less sexually appealing appearances. This is in direct correlation with the span of their fertility period. Males on the other hand are sexually vital - productive well into the dotage.
Wanna make lots of money in the movie business? Get lots of pretty young women and a few handsome fellows to feed the innate fantasies of the intended audience members.
Surveys like this - the people who dream up such surveys are looking for "inequalities" and "unfairness" where none exists.
Not all people are equal - some are more attractive, smarter, more talented, more athletic than others. It's the natural randomness of animals and human beings.
Deal with it. Make the best with what you have and stop looking for excuses for your perceived failures.

What’s “fairness” got to do with it?

Let’s be clear. Men being “paired up with younger women” isn’t a Hollywood invention, it’s a reality dominant across all cultures and times periods. This is a question about human nature, not about Hollywood.

Similarly, the reality of shorter careers isn’t restricted to actresses. Just ask any sex trade worker, ballet dancer or most professional athletes. Asking if this is “unfair” is largely irrelevant.

WHOA THERE!

Everybody knows that gender is a social construct, so actors are just actors. How can there be any sexism ??

Here's another question. Is it fair that really good looking people are more apt to have acting careers than plain or ugly people? Life ain't fair.

Gee ...
Females “blossom” sooner and “bloom” furiously unfortunately, they don’t tend to “age” well.
This is kind of a fact of nature and is rooted in Fertility, Fecundity and Likelihood of Successful Reproduction.
Males “blossom” later and rarely tend to “bloom” so that energy is expended over a longer period of time.
This is a fact of nature as well and is rooted in the ability to provide for and protect the Results of Any Successful Reproduction.

Nature ... unsurprisingly ... doesn’t care about what “Homo Sapiens” think, write, talk about or “Feel”.
It does what it does based on MILLIONS of years of success ... if an aberration crops up, it simply allows it to go extinct.

Humans ... Homo Sapiens ... started hurrying down a path of aberration in the 60’s when they decided they were smarter than the Natural Process and began imposing their own thought processes and feelings on their species.
Massive Wars, Diseases, Genocide failed to kill off the Species but Mankind’s own Intellectualization of its “place” and “role” in History is doing a fine job of it as Population Numbers dwindle due to Social Aberration wherein “Propagation of the Species” in no longer a particularly “important” trait because it doesn’t comport well with Intellectualized Feelings.
Homo Sapiens ... in “Civilized” form ... have been around for some ... maybe ... 15,000 years. If they last another 5,000 it will be astounding.
We are too Smart to realize how Dumb we are.

Nature doesn’t care.
Some of Nature’s “children” lasted for MILLIONS of years but We sneer at them as being “Dumb Animals”.

Ladies and Gentlemen ... I present to you the Lowly Cockroach ... as much as you might despise it, it Propagates Furiously and has outlasted almost Every Other Species.

There is a saying ... “If You Want God to Laugh, Tell Him Your Plans”
You could say the exact same thing about nature only ... evidence suggests that Nature has been at it longer.

It’s because of racist, misogynistic, straight white males, who prefer looking at pretty young women on screen.

I see many comments addressing women actors (yes, that's correct usage.)

The truth, and it IS true, is not just that females are getting dumped at an earlier age---men aren't very interesting at the same age.

Women mature earlier. Frankly, they know more at an earlier age. When a boy falls for girl he thinks, "WOW." More often than not, when a girl is interested in a guy she's also sizing him up---not strictly on the basis of who he is, but also of who he might become. It takes guys years to grasp this.

So, to keep this more brief, Men aren't even close to being "there" until they hit their mid-thirties. There's that.

Now...about showbiz...

You may have noticed that a lot of media is run and scripted by ... children. But, that's another comment for another day.

Another interesting comparison is Hollywood stars, that is the ones on the sidewalk. The ones for women actress are mostly awarded when they are very young were as the one for male actors are usually awarded when they are senior citizens. This is a bias of Hollywood and not popular demand. So by that way of scorning the populace at large is not this driver of sexisms and Hollywood is the highly sexist pig. It might be why they go out of there way to virtue signal as a compensating cover for what they actually are.

Intentional social conditioning??? Just maybe. Intentional sexualization of women? most likely. then look at the political party pushing it.

Fair? There is no 'fair' in life. It is. If you seek to demand fairness all you get is tyranny.

I put market demand, but it's also "something else". While the blockbuster, headliner movies, usually carry the typical younger visually appealing female actors more, and the male actors tend to be able to fill the role of attractive leading man at much older ages, I think it's a trope that's lost appeal to many over the years within independent, televised, streaming, and alternative entertainment avenues.

Decades ago, Hollywood was primarily stage and theater, glitz and glamorously perfect, (at least from the outside). Televison didn't headline actors that carried the same weight and fandom. Those mediums were for those who couldn't make it big.

Now, more famous actors are on television, becoming YouTubers, podcasters, Netflix original movie and series stars, Amazon, local theater, video games etc. Hollywood isn't exactly "Hollywood" anymore.

The rise of the female character actor over the years has been interesting. Actors like Jane Lynch, Margo Martindale, and many others already have a big head start as more actors, both male and female, matriculate to other avenues. [ranker.com]

Character actors are nothing new, but I think there's grown a greater demand for "relatable" rather than "coveted beauty". Celebrities like Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron have aged and "unglamorized" their appearances for roles, as age has slowly become seen as more real rather than a flaw.

There will always be a demand for the young beautiful woman as well as the attractive young man. Hollywood, Disney, Nickelodeon, musicians, teen dramas, etc will always have a place for them, most likely. However, I think there's developed a greater respect and need to fill the empty fluff of "perfection", that's driving actors as well as fans to places outside those standards.

Young people have a misconception of sexism.  

Did females get a raw deal from biology?  The answer is the blind clockmaker doesn't care about your feelings.  The only thing that matters is fitness.  Is an old female fit?  Not for fitness.  Of course in social species it gets a bit more complicated with multilevel selection.  In humans it is even more complicated because culture adds a layer of eusociality to fitness.  

In the West we live in an emerging culture that no longer seems to care about fitness.  If we don't care about fitness what do we care about?  The answer is luxus.  Luxus is not just leisure and material  abundance it is psychological as well.  We can afford not to care about fitness.  In the past fitness was our social security benefit, from kings all the way down to peasants.

They know not what they do.

Cryptic  sexual conflict.  From insects to humans there is a battle of the sexes. Runaway dimorphism is not a good thing.  In a dimorphic species males tend to be larger and stronger forcing females to play the game of sexual conflict at the subliminal level, often at the biological level below any conscious awareness.  They have no idea for the most part when they are playing the game they just go with the flow.

Those that have eyes to see let them see.

I consider myself a rather keen observer of sexual behavior.  All my life I have noticed that there is a male and female hierarchy.  The rules for ascending that hierarchy are different.  Whether they like it or not female hierarchy is based on feelings and male hierarchy on physicality of one sort or the other.  Male social standing is largely based on presence, wealth, ability to persuade other males, humor or other similar social skills.  Female social standing starts out at a very early age based primarily on appearance, or future fertility, ugly men can compensate but ugly women are suppressed by other women.  

There is a patriarchy and a matriarchy operating in the same space.  

Women are not the victims of males they make themselves out to be.  Women are just as often the victims of other other women.  Young women seldom have any moral qualms about replacing an older woman as a mate.  What keeps them in check is the matriarchy.  Men don't really have any problem with "lose" women unless they have an investment in them.  The pecking order amongst women is horrendous.  

Our instincts are out of whack with the demands of civilization.

The first thing to know is monogamy is unnatural.  I have yet to meet a woman who wasn't psychologically unfaithful.   For the most part it takes the form of admiration of higher status males than their mate.  It turns out cuckolding is a biologically sound strategy.  That works well for birds, other apes, tribal societies to some extent but doesn't work well in a civilized space.  Civilization requires trust of strangers.  Nothing breaks down trust more than your female idolizing higher status males.  The statistics bear out what happens if females are not sexually restrained.  Twenty percent of the males get all the sex and the Incel problem explodes.  Why is that a problem females ask.  Again it breaks down trust, in the case of Incels not only trust in females but the society as a whole.  

I have only covered a bit of what we know about sex.  I'm not going to write a book.  The point is that it is not a mystery why society is dysfunctional.  Everyone knows what is wrong but nobody wants to give up the advantages they already have for some piece of pie in the sky utopian dream except the dreamers and the misfits.  It's the misfits unfortunately that are the new thought leaders.

Really? Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Meryl Streep, Maggie Smith, Sigourney Weaver, Betty White, Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Annette Bening, Jacki Weaver, Noni Hazelhurst, Judy Davis, the list goes on and on...

A lot more women are drawn to acting careers. That makes a difference.

The acting “profession” means nothing to me at all.

This is agenda setting by the Left. The notion that human nature might be controllable is suggested here. It isn't. Every attempt to control human nature is always at the expense of Liberty.

I think it is unfair that all people are not exactly the same. That needs to be fixed !

I'd much rather see a good film starring a seasoned actress that some crappy youth oriented flick with all young hotties. Market demand? Shallow people in that market.

I have always Loved intelligent women, I married one, 40 years ago, and we love each other dearly.
However;
The most disgusting, evil, soul sucking form of humanity, are the militant, man hating feminist’s that have made this an issue.
Same with racism.
Life isn’t fair

The most elitist and divisive thing anyone can do is to try to make everything equal

I get the feeling human nature is in play there regarding such decisions, and certainly doesn't strike me as being sexist.