Actresses and Fear of the ‘M’ Role

Teenagers are all the rage this year as the networks cast series candidates for next season. Nearly everyone is after a youth-oriented hit, populated by fresh faces like those on the WB’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Dawson’s Creek.”

What almost no one wanted to do, however, was play their mothers.

Hollywood’s well-practiced ageism is seldom discussed in a significant manner. Even a recent “60 Minutes” piece devoted to Riley Weston, the 32-year-old who secured work as a writer on “Felicity” by pretending to be 19, proved shallow and a little self-serving, given that advertisers frequently knock CBS (including “60 Minutes”) because the network’s lineup primarily attracts an older audience than competitors.

Reluctance among actresses to play mothers is in part simply a function of age and perception, a fear that being seen that way--especially if the children are older than the Olsen twins--will limit opportunities to play leading roles.

“Even 45-year-old actresses don’t want to play [age] 35,” said one TV executive.

This is an issue for men as well, although considerably less so, given that movie talent like Sean Connery and Harrison Ford can still star opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anne Heche, and that Ted Danson, Bill Cosby, Chuck Norris and even chunky Sammo Hung can still play leading men on TV.

Yet a related, more complex element in this equation stems from the kind of parts available to adults when so many TV and movie protagonists are self-absorbed teenagers, relegating actors in their 30s and 40s to portraying their little-seen parents--characters with as much depth as parents and teachers in the old Charlie Brown cartoons, who droned on in indecipherable “Wah-wah” speech.

“The trouble is the roles are focused on the 15-year-olds,” said Joan Hyler, a manager whose clients include such actresses as Diane Lane and Sharon Lawrence. “It’s not being a mother, but what the roles are. . . . It’s them not wanting to play cardboard characters.”

Hyler added that the dearth of meaty characters for women is even more pronounced in feature films. According to her, “An entire generation of women is being eliminated by this emphasis on the teen market.”

Of course, there’s nothing that says parents can’t be fun, even in teen-oriented fare. Kurtwood Smith’s cranky father is the best reason to watch Fox’s “That ‘70s Show,” with Debra Jo Rupp nearly his equal as the chipper if set-upon mother. Older parents on two other popular comedies, “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Dharma & Greg,” provide some of the biggest laughs on those series, even as the latter’s more photogenic stars grab the Entertainment Weekly covers.

There’s also, obviously, a need to accept a little creative license here. Sitcoms and dramas tend to exaggerate reality, for good reason. Sitting around the table listening to Mom and Dad talk about escrow and debate whether to tile the kitchen floor might be a regular Wednesday around many homes, but it wouldn’t exactly make for riveting television.

Still, the troubling aspect of these teen-centric shows is one of tone, as the parents orbit around the teens, whose epic problems--from acne to dating, to killing vampires while worrying about acne and dating--serve as the focal point of each program’s particular universe.

“If it’s a show on the WB about all the kids at school . . . and you’re the mother they left back in Ohio, it’s pretty hard to say you’re going to be there on a major level,” said Mark Teitelbaum, a partner in the management firm Somers Teitelbaum David. “Actresses inherently believe as soon as they play a mother they’ve aged themselves 10 years, and they’re into ‘the mother’ roles. [But] once you get past that rationale, the roles themselves this year were insignificant.”

Parents on most of the WB’s teen-oriented shows--including “Dawson’s Creek,” “Buffy,” “Felicity” and “Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane”--aren’t just absent or inept; rather, in the few scenes they’re given, they are frequently clueless, bullying or dysfunctional, in need of a stern lecture from their kids regarding morality.

While this doubtless caters to the teen audience that watches these shows, it’s a far cry from the more thoughtful dynamic presented within a series like ABC’s late, lamented drama “My So-Called Life,” in which the parents’ concerns often paralleled those of the kids--the daughter obsessed over pimples, her mom over age lines--underscoring how our problems simply grow up with us.

“With the focus on the teen market, not only are parents marginalized, but they’re demonized, if they’re there at all,” said Martha Lauzen, a professor at UC San Diego who has studied the depiction of women in prime-time television.

Lauzen’s research has found a sharp decline in the number of roles for women over 40 in prime time--from 26% during the 1995-96 TV season to 12% during the ‘97-98 campaign.

“Women sort of fall off the face of the Earth when they reach 40 years old,” Lauzen observed.

CBS has bucked this trend, primarily with its Sunday night movies. Yet rewards for structuring projects around more mature adults are limited, and producers frequently hear networks and studios asking whether parts written with people in their 30s or 40s in mind could be cast younger.

It’s no surprise, then, to see numerous projects being considered for next fall set in high school or college, some with high-concept twists like teens from outer space or with psychic powers. If this development trend continues, a 16-year-old doctor like “Doogie Howser, M.D.” won’t be exotic but rather the norm.

This preoccupation with youth has placed even well-intentioned executives in a difficult bind. Managers and agents want to represent older clients but feel compelled to diversify by adding more teens to their roster. Producers want to stay true to an artistic vision, but they also will do what’s necessary to afford their series the best chance of seeing the light of day.

“You can only fight that fight so long for the former ‘Charlie’s Angels’ or stars of ‘Dallas,’ ” Teitelbaum noted. “You have to be sensitive to what the realities of the marketplace are.”

Many within the entertainment industry share the hope that the pendulum eventually will swing back at least a little in the other direction, that networks will discover their shows can’t sustain a broadcast-sized audience when every key character was born during the Reagan administration.

Until that day comes, those same people spend their days scurrying to sign deals with high school kids, actresses tremulously view “motherhood” as just another word for nowhere else to go, career-wise, and Mother’s Day in Hollywood represents a holiday when the greeting cards arrive sheathed in plain brown envelopes.