Seasoned actors' summer success

But according to 2006 statistics from the Screen Actors Guild, the latest available, women older than 40 nab just 26% of all roles for women. (Men older than 40 get 40% of the male roles, though I'm convinced that's because every blockbuster needs a platoon of doughnut-eating cops). Writers, at least, get to work until they're 50, and then Hollywood assumes that the gray hair makes their brain cells atrophy. Those ages 51 to 60 account for less than 20% of working writers. Directors get a little more leeway, but then again, most of them start later.

I've been mulling over why Downey, Parker and Streep are having career resurgences after decades in the business. Parker was Annie on Broadway back in 1979. Downey began appearing in his father's films at the ripe old age of 5 and made his first non-nepotistic appearance in John Sayles' 1983 flick "Baby It's You." Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971 and her film debut in "Julia" in 1977.

Of course, there's an obvious answer: It's the talent, stupid.

And then there are the not-so-obvious answers. They never got too hubristic. They never jumped on couches, proselytized about offbeat religions, or broke their covenant with the audience -- even Downey, who despite his junkie past never hurled cellphones at hotel clerks or acted bratty in public. They weren't too proud to do TV. They're funny, and they're survivors in these uncertain economic times when surviving is an admired art. What's the main plot line of the "Sex and the City" movie? It's how Carrie bounces back from utter humiliation.

Also, Downey, Parker and Streep developed their readily identifiable artistic personas before Hollywood's star-making machine completely ran off the tracks.

Everyone's a star these days, with the Paris Hiltons getting the same stature as the Oscar winners.

It's not only the Us magazine democratization -- or diminution -- of celebrity, where no-talents are famous and every star gets his feet of clay held up for microscopic inspection (a process bent on destroying the mystery necessary for great stardom). It's that Hollywood has spent the last decade trying to figure out a formula for films that are movie-star-proof, ergo, no one has to shell out hefty chunks of the gross to those darned performers. Now spectacle is king.