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Kate Beckinsale hits back at trolls saying she’s ‘too old’ to post bikini pictures

'I can’t imagine how unhappy you must feel to leave comments like this,' actor writes

Thursday 05 December 2019 09:57 GMT

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Kate Beckinsale hits back at trolls that say she is too old for bikinis - EXPLAINER

Kate Beckinsale has hit back at online trolls who have said she is “too old” to share photographs of herself in a bikini on Instagram.

Over the past few days, the Serendipity actor has been sharing pictures from her sun-soaked holiday to Mexico on the social media platform.

One of the shots features Beckinsale posing indoors, wearing a high-waisted, black bikini.

While several of the 46-year-old’s followers left her praiseworthy comments, one critic wrote: “She’s too old... looking for attention.”

Beckinsale issued a lengthy response to the troll, stating: “I don’t know who has made you feel that if you get older you have no value, can’t be attractive or sexy or have a relationship with your body that isn’t only self-loathing.”

“Are you aware that when you get the urge to accuse someone of something, especially someone you don’t know, or attribute an intention without ever having met the person, that the only thing really being achieved is revealing something about yourself or something you fear about yourself?” the Love and Friendship star said.

Beckinsale addressed the troll directly saying “as one female to another”, it is important to set “healthier boundaries” when it comes to body image.

“If you’re young and fearing getting older, don’t,” she wrote.

“The people or press that are scaring you that your value is tied up in youth, or in fact anything that is not currently within your reach, is noise I do hope you allow yourself to ignore.”

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

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1/12The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Anne Hathaway

The 32-year-old actress said she has already experiences job rejections because of her age. “Now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part? I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are,” she told Glamour.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Helen Mirren

On news that Maggie Gyllenhaal had been turned down for being ‘too old’, aged 37, to play a 55-year-old man’s partner: “It’s f***ing outrageous. It’s ridiculous. Honestly, it’s so annoying. And ’twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It’s so annoying.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Gyllenhaal revealed she was told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old, aged 37, to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. “It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh,” she said at the time.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep has helped fund an all-female screenwriters group called The Writer’s Lab to encourage more women to pen Hollywood scripts. She previously told Vogue in 2011: “Once women pass childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Emma Thompson

The actress said she thought Hollywood is “still completely s***” when it comes to treating women equally to men. ““When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world. And when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women, and I find that very disturbing and sad.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Elizabeth Banks

Banks said she was driven from acting to directing due to the lack of roles for older women in Hollywood. “"[Industry sexism] drove me to direct for sure. I definitely was feeling that I was unfulfilled and a little bit bored by the things that were coming across my desk. I mean look at Gwyneth Paltrow who has her Oscar [for Shakespeare in Love] and played fifth banana to Iron Man,” she told Deadline.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Viola Davis

“I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualised role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualised woman. I was the prototype of the ‘mommified’ role,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Liv Tyler

The Lord of the Rings actress said she only get cast in roles where she is treated as a “second class citizen” at the age of 38. “When you’re in your teens or twenties, there is an abundance of ingenue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], you’re usually the wife or the girlfriend - a sort of second-class citizen. There are more interesting roles for women when they get a bit older,” she told More magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Cate Blanchett

The actress famously called out sexism on the red carpet at the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Awards. When a camera operator scanned her up and down, she said: “Do you do this to the guys?” In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine, she reminded the film industry that movies with leading women can still be successful. “And thank you to... those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the centre, are niche experiences. They are not -- audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.”

Gareth Cattermole/Getty

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Ellen Page

Asked if she had ever encountered sexism in Hollywood, Page told The Guardian: ‘Oh my God, yeah! It's constant! It's how you're treated, it's how you're looked at, how you're expected to look in a photoshoot, it's how you're expected to shut up and not have an opinion, it's how you... If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Zoe Saldana

The actress says she refuses roles where she has to play the generic girlfriend, wife or sexy bombshell. "It's very hard being a woman in a man's world, and I recognised it was a man's world even when I was a kid. It's an inequality and injustice that drove me crazy, and which I always spoke out against — and I've always been outspoken,” she told Manhattan magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Charlize Theron

The actress spoke to ELLE about negotiating equal pay for the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel: "This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn't mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you're doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way."

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Beckinsale added that she “can’t imagine” how “unhappy” the person may feel to have written a comment of that nature.

“Sending love and the real hope you receive this message in the spirit that it’s meant,” she wrote.

“I know you have more to offer than leaving mean comments that illuminate far more about you than they do about the people you choose to comment on.”

Several of Beckinsale’s Instagram followers praised her for her “graceful” and “respectful” response.

“Thank you for showing her how women should lift each other up and show compassion rather than putting them down,” one person commented.

“You could have easily retaliated with more negativity and hatred but you responded with love,” another remarked.

On a separate Instagram post featuring Beckinsale in a bikini on the beach, an individual stated that they believe the actor is “having a mid-life crisis”.

The Underworld star replied with her signature quick-wit, writing: “Oh! I think that’s because you’re an annoying a**hole.”

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