Hollywood's Year of the Cougar

Nicole Kidman's Babygirl is the latest of several age-gap romances pairing A-list actresses with much younger men

- Alison de Souza

LOS ANGELES - "Cougar" has always been a fairly derisive term, its continued use underscoring the lingering taboo around relationships in which the woman is significantly older than the man.

The word suggests predation rather than romance, and the lack of an equivalent pejorative for the far more common older man-younger woman pairing suggests a double standard at play.

So, it has been fascinating to see Hollywood defy that cultural script in 2024 with a string of steamy age-gap romances starring Oscar-winning actresses opposite much younger male actors.

Anne Hathaway's 40-year-old gallery owner falls for a 24-year-old boy band heart-throb (Nicholas Galitzine) in the romantic comedy-drama The Idea Of You (2024), which was released on Prime Video.

Sparks fly between Laura Dern's 50-something author and a 30-something finance guy (Liam Hemsworth) in the Netflix drama Lonely Planet (2024).

And Nicole Kidman's middle-aged writer catches the eye of a movie star 16 years her junior in the romantic drama A Family Affair (2024) on Netflix.

The actress pops up again in erotic thriller