Maggie Gyllenhaal, 37, Was Told By a Producer She Was 'Too Old' to Play a 55-Year-Old Actor's Love Interest

Maggie Gyllenhaal is a Golden Globe winner, Oscar nominee, and all-around pretty great actress that most productions would benefit from hiring. Yet there was one producer who didn't want to hire Gyllenhaal recently, and his reason was ridiculous.

According to Gyllenhaal, she was told by this producer that she was "too old" to play the love interest of an already-cast 55-year-old actor. Gyllenhaal is 37. Math isn't our strong suit, but even we know that that's a gap of almost 20 years. Gyllenhaal could almost have played this actor's daughter.

This sort of thing is nothing new in Hollywood: Woody Allen's recent "Magic in the Moonlight" paired 54-year-old Colin Firth with 26-year-old Emma Stone. Cameron Crowe seems to have caught on to this trend, casting Stone opposite 40-year-old Bradley Cooper in the upcoming movie "Aloha."

Comedian and truth-teller Amy Schumer commented on this in a recent sketch that celebrated "Veep" star Julia Louis-Dreyfus' "last f--kable day," in which Schumer, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette having a viking-style funeral for Dreyfus' castability in younger, attractive roles. In the sketch, Schumer recalls one of the most egregious examples of Hollywood bias against middle-aged actresses: Sally Field played Tom Hanks' love interest in "Punchline," then played his mother in "Forrest Gump" just a year or two later.

Gyllenhaal said that initially, the comment from the producer made her angry and sad...but eventually, she had to laugh it off as yet another way in which Hollywood treats women badly.

By the way, Gyllenhaal is currently in a happy relationship with actor Peter Sarsgaard, who is 44. Again, we're not great at math, but we're almost positive that's less than 55.