Jim Carrey to Tom Cruise, which Hollywood stars are turning 60 in 2022?

With concepts like shelf life and balancing career and family only associated with women, it is evident why male stars continue to gloat in their “agelessness” playing heroes alongside women half their age. The seventh instalment of Mission Impossible is slated to release in November this year, which means the actor will turn 60 by the time the film premieres.

Tom Cruise

It is almost an unsettling realisation that Tom Cruise has essayed the role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt for over 25 years now in an action franchise that kickstarted in 1996. From scaling up the Burj Khalifa to dangling from helicopters, Mission: Impossible is buoyed by Cruise’s elaborate stunt work. Even for Mission Impossible 7, the actor will be seen leaping off of a cliff in a dirtbike and then pulling his parachute to land safely on the ground kilometres below. It is touted as the most dangerous stunt ever pulled off by the Mission: Impossible team, along with being the grandest stunt in the history of Hollywood.

This is proof enough that the actor’s age does not quite dictate the terms of replicating the success of the previous films. Just raising the stakes is enough. Further, with the heavy implementation of de-ageing technologies, most notably seen in 2019’s Captain Marvel with Samuel L Jackson and Clark Gregg’s characters, and royally messed up in Firefly Lane, age truly seems to be just a number for producers, at least as far as men are concerned.

Jim Carrey

Comedy legend and actor Jim Carrey also turned 60 this week. He has been aptly named the usherer of the golden age of comedy in Hollywood. In 1994, with the releases of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey revolutionised comedy. That such movies could turn out to be tentpoles proved that comedy was a lucrative enterprise.

But one of the best performances of the actor, as claimed by several noted film critics, has to be as the moustache-twirling antagonist Dr Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog. While the film itself was universally panned, Carrey’s turn as a cartoonish villain with stylised struts and gazes won him glowing praises.

Ralph Fiennes

Another male star who also will be a sexagenarian this year is Ralph Fiennes. Very few actors commanded the screen with as much authority in the earlier half of the 1990s as Fiennes with films like Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Schindler’s List. He trailblazed a new kind of evil — the devilishly charming monster — with the role of Nazi officer Amon Goeth in Schlinder’s list. There was a grace in the subdued and handsome British actor, whether he plays a battered lover in The English Patient or a hissing, slithering villain Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise. The role, that required him to be as formidable a villain as possible, was tinged with darkly odd humour.

But the first time he unleashed his zany, exuberant wit was in 2014 as Gustave, a ridiculous, snobbish but endearing concierge in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. An embodiment of the pathos of dwindling legacy, Fiennes’ Gustave was hilarious and heartbreaking. Although the actor continues to headline films in this decade, he has smoothly transitioned to genre cinemas, which are not necessarily in denial of the actor’s age. In The Dig (2021), for instance, Fiennes plays the ageing archaeologist Basil Brown, who propelled one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in British history — the Sutton Hoo dig of 1939.

Demi Moore

While the big screens continue to be reserved for male stars, female actors have had to expand their horizons and dabble into multiple platforms and storytelling formats. Demi Moore, who also turns 60 on November 11, appeared in a recurring role as a straight-shooting nurse in Empire. This is her second TV stint, after beginning her career in 1982 with the soap opera General Hospital. She will also front an Amazon series based on the erotic drama podcast Dirty Drama, which is currently in development.

The actress’ contribution to Hollywood, though, stretches far beyond her films. A champion of pay parity in Hollywood, she became the highest-paid actress in 1995, setting the stage for other female actors to demand the same salaries as their male counterparts.

Finding relevance in a youth-obsessed industry can be challenging, but these stars have managed to turn the tides in their favour with act and tact. We just hope Cruise’s next impossible mission is to finally call it quits as an action star.