Amanda Peet’s Honest Essay about Aging in Hollywood

I fell in love with Amanda Peet during the recent two-season run of HBO’s Togetherness by the Duplass brothers (Indie filmmakers behind the “Puffy Chair”, “Tangerine” and other mumblecore type films. Sadly, it has not been renewed.

She plays “Tina”, the tarted-up single sister to married mom Michelle in all of her tight- white-jeaned glory, who works VPL, cleavage and caked Maybelline mascara like no one’s business. Close-ups reveal crows feet and grey hairs, which when juxtaposed against her saucy attire, creates the saddest and baddest broad to hit premium cable in years. This honest depiction of a world-weary forty-something single woman is heartbreaking and heartening. She is my fucking hero.

And then I read her piece that ran in Lena Dunham’s new website and newsletter, Lenny. Her post, “Amanda Peet, Never Crossing the Botox Rubicon”, can be read here (I beg you, it’s fantastic).

When writing about how, at 44, she was deemed “ineligible” for a role because “she wasn’t current enough”, she writes this:

The train has left the station and I’m one of those moronic stragglers running alongside with her purse caught in the door. Everyone’s looking at me like, Let go, you bullheaded old hag! There’s no room for you.

Amanda, thank you for penning such a brave and thoughtful piece for all of us with our bags caught in the door.

For Peet’s sake, let’s all pull ourselves into that train.