For This Club, Hollywood Life Begins at 35

For the Los Angeles-based group Actresses @ Work, the evolution from support group to activist organization mirrored that of the members’ cinematic inspiration, “The First Wives Club.”

Co-chair Pat Lentz, 44, said the group first began meeting last summer as a gathering of industry associates who realized they were “all getting to that certain age and the auditions were starting to drop off.”

As the group grew, the members decided that crying over lost auditions and, as Lentz puts it, the “ridiculous images of 20-year-old women selling eye cream and hair dye,” would only get them so far. Their call to action came at the time Hollywood was reconsidering its target audience based on the success of the film “The First Wives Club”--a tale of three spurned, middle-aged women who band together and plot revenge against their ex-husbands.

Surveys showed that demographically, older female audiences were to thank for the film’s success. This came as no surprise to 45-year-old Deborah Harmon, an actress who serves as the group’s publicity chair.

“TV shows, movies and advertisers seem to be cutting off their nose to spite their face when they don’t represent the growing, powerful audience of female baby boomers,” Harmon said.

Actresses @ Work has 40 members who are involved in the entertainment industry in some capacity: film, television and commercial actresses, voice-over actresses, directors, producers and dancers. They meet once a week and have a guest speaker--ranging from casting directors to motivational speakers--at each meeting.

To join the group, a woman must be at least 35, have joined a union and relied on the entertainment business as her primary source of income for more than five years.

Harmon said she’s amazed at how many struggling mid-career actresses seem to resurrect their careers after joining. This can’t be a coincidence, she says, citing the power of having a support group, networking among themselves and building confidence.

Actress Patsy Pease was a long-running fixture on the daytime soap opera “Days of Our Lives,” until the show dropped her and she found herself unable to get work. Now, she’s back on the show in a guest slot and “Days” is thinking of reinstating her character.

Harmon herself had a role in the feature “Bachelor Party” and played the wife of Judd Hirsch’s character in the television series “Dear John” before seeing her own work drop off. Now, she’s just landed her first directing gig.

Actresses @ Work co-chair Debbie Zipp, 44, was a regular on “Murder, She Wrote” for three seasons.

“It’s been important for those of us who’ve made a living all our lives in this business to know that this hits everyone, and that we can challenge it and effect change,” Zipp said. “This is our way of having our dreams back.”

The group, which is applying for nonprofit status, has also adopted a sister charity. Actresses @ Work is helping raise money and volunteering time to the Women’s Care Cottage in North Hollywood, a shelter for homeless women and children.

Zipp said that choosing that particular charity was important not only because it is one that “helps women get back on their feet,” but also because it involves children.

“A lot of us are mothers, and we are doing this not only for ourselves, but also because we don’t want our daughters to go through the things we did--to feel like less of a woman or a viable person because they’ve reached a certain age,” Zipp said. “Art really reflects society and affects where it goes.”

One of Actresses @ Work’s most immediate goals will be to diversify its ranks to include more minority members, Lentz said. “Because most of us recruit members when we audition, we don’t reach many women of color because white women audition with other white women.”

Actresses @ Work plans a nationwide letter-writing campaign to television advertisers, either lauding or lambasting them for their representation of the female baby boomer audience, Lentz said. Plans to do the same for television shows and feature films are in the works.

Commercials featuring young women selling hair dye, skin cream and other products used by older women were given the thumbs-down. Ads like ones for Dove skin care products, with what Lentz describes as “beautiful older women, lines and all,” were given “bravos.”

“When I think about what our group is trying to do, I think about that double standard in Hollywood, where a man can have lines and crags on his face and it’s a sign of character, but a woman has one little spot on her face and she’s out of there,” Lentz said. “Hopefully, we can change that.”

For more information: (818) 299-8700.