'Matrix' star Carrie-Anne Moss says she was offered a grandma role 'literally the day after my 40th birthday'

Erin Donnelly
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Carrie-Anne Moss says she was treated differently in Hollywood after turning 40. (Photo: VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)
Carrie-Anne Moss says she was treated differently in Hollywood after turning 40. (Photo: VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)

Carrie-Anne Moss is opening up about the challenges she's faced as an over-40 actress.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the 53-year-old Canadian star — best known for playing Trinity in the Matrix franchise — recently joined friend and fellow actress Justine Bateman, 55, for a candid conversation about aging in Hollywood. Former Family Ties star Bateman has recently released a book, FACE: One Square Foot of Skin, about the scrutiny her looks have received as she resists pressure to undergo plastic surgery.

Speaking with Bateman for the 92nd Street Y event, Moss revealed that she too has been treated differently as she ages.

"I had heard that at 40 everything changed," Moss, whose credits also include Memento and Jessica Jones, shared. "I didn't believe in that because I don't believe in just jumping on a thought system that I don't really align with.

"But literally the day after my 40th birthday, I was reading a script that had come to me and I was talking to my manager about it. She was like, 'Oh, no, no, no, it's not that role [you're reading for], it's the grandmother. I may be exaggerating a bit, but it happened overnight. I went from being a girl to the mother to beyond the mother."

Moss did not divulge which project featured the role. She went on to admit that seeing your appearance change onscreen can be "kind of brutal."

"You don't feel like you've aged much and suddenly you're seeing yourself onscreen," she said, adding, "I would look at these French and European actresses and they just had something about them that felt so confident in their own skin. I couldn't wait to be that. I strive for that. It's not easy being in this business. There's a lot of external pressure."

Moss and Keanu Reeves in 1999's The Matrix. (Photo: Ronald Siemoneit/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)
Moss and Keanu Reeves in 1999's The Matrix. (Photo: Ronald Siemoneit/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

The actress, who wrapped filming on The Matrix just as she turned 31, will reprise her role of Trimity opposite 56-year-old Keanu Reeves in the upcoming Matrix 4.

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