Anne Hathaway says she's losing parts to 24 year olds

Actress Emma Thompson, Anne Hathaway and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Photo / Getty Images

At 32, Anne Hathaway is starting to feel the sting of Hollywood's sexist attitude toward casting older women - a category she apparently already fits into.

Hathaway is the latest of a string of actresses to comment on the difficulty of losing parts to younger actresses but unlike fellow actresses Emma Thompson and Maggie Gyllenhaal, the former Princess Diaries star is philosophical about the situation.

"I can't complain about it because I benefitted from it. When I was in my early twenties, parts would be written for women in their fifties and I would get them. And now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24 year old get that part?'

Actress Anne Hathaway. Photo / Getty Images

"I was that 24 year old once, I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are. All I can do right now is think that thankfully you have built up perhaps a little bit of cachet and can tell stories that interest you and if people go to see them you'll be allowed to make more."

Gyllenhaal was much less accommodating, calling Hollywood 'disappointing' in its attitude toward women earlier this year after she was told she was too old to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man.

She was 37 at the time.

"It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh."

In July, veteran actress Emma Thompson, one of the few actresses to continue landing roles into her 50s, was even more frank in her assessment of Hollywood's ageism, calling the industry 'disturbing' and lamenting the fact things had gotten worse over time.

"I think it's still completely s***, actually," she said.

"I don't think there's any appreciable improvement and I think that, for women, the question of how they are supposed to look is worse than it was even when I was young. So, no, I am not impressed, at all."

Thompson said she was also told she was too old to play Hugh Grant's love interest in 1995's Sense and Sensibility, despite the fact Grant is only a year younger than her in real life.

Her response: "'Do you want to go take a flying leap?"

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- nzherald.co.nz