Powerful, attractive CEO meets young, fresh-faced intern – we’ve seen it all a hundred times before. Well, it’s back in fashion, but it looks a little different and a lot sexier.

Seemingly overnight, we’re being overrun by films about older women dating younger men. The likes of Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Hathaway are in action enchanting younger men sans paunch and avec their own hair, to the delight of the viewing public. Now the trailer to the new Bridget Jones film (release date 14 Feb 2025!) has revealed that the nation’s beloved 50something singleton gives Leo Woodall (29 years of age in the film) an intimate tour of her granny pants.

It’s been nearly 60 years since Mrs Robinson scandalised America by seducing Dustin Hoffmann’s graduate, and the fact we’re even writing about this shows how little the dial has been moved in the idea of older woman as desirable. Some of the new releases that we’ve listed below tackle head-on what is still seen largely as taboo, while others concentrate on the sexual chemistry (Liam Hemsworth and Laura Dern don’t even make it past the wall of the bedroom – respect!). But love or loathe this new Hollywood fixation, there’s one thing we can all agree on – ‘mature’ women of the world, you’ve still got it.

A Family Affair

Originally entitled Motherf**ker (which tells you just about everything you need to know), A Family Affair is the story of 24-year-old Zara (Joey King), PA to an intolerable young film star Chris Cole (Zac Efron) who shacks up with her mother (Nicole Kidman). It’s about as surface-level as these films come, a classic Efron feel-good film that’s easily watched, maybe easily forgotten, but there’s no question it’s a bit of fun and Kidman and Efron magic up enough chemistry to blow up the lab.

The Idea of You

The Idea of You sees megastar Anne Hathaway play the divorced, down-on-her-luck gallery owner who meets a rockstar played by relatively smalltime actor at the time of filming, Nicholas Galatzine. They fall in love, but Solène (Hathaway) is unsure about the optics of their relationship, insecure about her age and lightly mistrustful about Hayes’ (Galatzine) intentions. Hathaway at 40 could easily be 10 years younger though, so they may as well both be late 20somethings giving it a go.

Between the Temples

Released in January 2024, Between the Temples is all about forbidden love, in all sorts of ways. Jason Schwarzmann, 44, plays Ben Gottlieb, a widowed Jewish cantor suffering a crisis of faith until he meets Carla (Carol Kane, 72), who happens to have been his primary school music teacher. Cue love, pain, awkwardness and a head-on exploration of the role of age in relationships.

Lonely Planet

Laura Dern gets to play opposite hunky Liam Hemsworth in Lonely Planet, an unlikely love story set at a writers’ retreat in Morocco. Both in broken or breaking relationships, Katherine (Dern) and Owen (Hemsworth) are brought together by a series of ‘unfortunate’ events (a water outage, a broken-down car) and continue to seek each other out as they work through their own issues. Will they or won’t they? They will. They do.

Baby Girl (Jan 2025)

Haven’t had enough Nicole ‘Cougar’ Kidman yet? Well, she’s back at it in A24’s Babygirl and it looks intense. She plays Romy, a married CEO seduced by a sexy and slightly sinister young intern (Harris Dickinson). Desire battles reason, and Kidman plays the tragic hero as her life falls apart around the steamy affair (and yes, it’s super steamy). It raises interesting questions about abuse of power, gender dynamics, erotic desire and culpability. Is Kidman villain or victim? You be the judge.

Marty Supreme (2025)

Would you come out of retirement to get it on with Timothée Chalamet? Gwyneth Paltrow couldn’t turn down the chance years after saying ‘cut’ on her film career, so we’ll see her play opposite Chalamet in Marty Supreme, a semi-fictional biopic based on the true story of Marty Reisman, an American table tennis player born in 1930. The film is still shrouded in mystery, but the outfits look awesome and the cast speaks for itself, so we’re up for it.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2025)

Since White Lotus and One Day, Leo Woodall has been hot stuff, and the natural next move for him was, of course, to become Bridget Jones’ last and youngest lover. The fourth and final instalment sees Bridget getting over Mark Darcy’s death (spoiler but seriously you’ll find out from the trailer!) by, well, getting under a 29-year-old. It’s out next year and surely far more tasteful and romantic than I’ve just made it sound.

I Want Your Sex (2025)

Now here’s something to look forward to. In this erotic thriller, Licorice Pizza‘s Cooper Hoffman scores a job as assistant and, as it turns out, sexual muse to a sexy artist played by Olivia Wilde. Elliot (Hoffman) can’t believe his luck, until Erika (Wilde) ups the anti and he gets dragged into a world of death, deception and depravity. Oh, and Charli XCX is in it too. Needless to say, we can hardly contain ourselves.