Evening Standard - ES Magazine
MID-LIFE CRISIS? WHAT MID-LIFE CRISIS?
As Tom Hardy and Brad Pitt have shown, men reinventing themselves after 40 can be glorious, says Hamish MacBain
The expression ‘life begins at 40’ comes from the title of a self-help book by the American philosopher Walter B Pitkin, published 90 years ago. His thesis may well have been true in 1932: when life beyond 18 for most consisted of getting married, trying not to get killed in a big war, raising children and finally enjoying the couple of decades between said children leaving home — in time for them to enjoy the by-then-burgeoning youth culture movements that you completely missed out on — and death.
Yet ask most present day quadragenarians whether life begins at 40 and you will likely get a reply along the lines of, ‘Can we come back to this later? I’ve got a school run to do. Then I need to head off to the job that I despise but which I can’t quit because of ballooning mortgage rates and the cost of Lego crisis. Then we are still only two episodes into The Capture and I’m tired of shouting “No spoilers!” across the office at people who finished it ages ago. Also: I’m just tired, generally. Can we pencil in a drink soon to discuss, say summer 2035?’
You might think that part of the deal for generations having children later and later in life would be that they felt like they were also allowed to pursue dreams and ambitions later and later in life. But often it feels like the reverse is true. Part of the problem is the ongoing effect of the above-mentioned youth culture explosion: ie that, since about 1962, it has basically been illegal to idolise anyone over the age of 30. Or even 25. Flip forward a page, for example, to meet a man — this week’s cover star — who at 21 has already played in a European Championship final and will soon enough partake in a World Cup one (note to readers: this is wishful thinking, not a mistake).
Acting? If you haven’t broken a box office record by your mid-20s, a life of call centre shifts punctuated by occasional, largely unsuccessful auditions awaits. And as for music, forget about it. Paul McCartney was 27 when The Beatles split up: an old codger in comparison to Johnny Marr, who was 23 when he called time on The Smiths. Stormzy was 25 when he headlined Glastonbury, the second-youngest solo act to do so, behind David Bowie at 24. There is politics, of course — most obviously Donald Trump, who made quite the career pivot in his 70s — but… well, let’s stick to non-sociopaths here.
2022, though — and here’s an ending to a sentence beginning with ‘2022’ that you likely weren’t expecting — has brought fresh hope for those begrudgingly advancing into their fifth decade. Witness struggling actor and father-of-three Tom Hardy, 45, who discreetly entered a jiu-jitsu tournament in Milton Keynes last month and won himself a gold medal. Brad Pitt, meanwhile — 58, though perpetually going on about 22 — is now a sculptor, and a sculptor that no less than The Guardian’s art critic describes as ‘an extremely impressive artist’. (Side note: back in this pair’s dayjobworld, Oscar buzz for best leading actor is swirling mostly not around Timothée Chalamet or Harry Styles, but previously unnominated septuagenarian Bill Nighy and 53-yearold Brendan Fraser).
Anyway: imagine for a second that Hardy had got the shit kicked out of him and gone home on crutches. Or if Pitt’s sculptures had been as crap as Ed Sheeran’s paintings. Would we not have, rather than lots of laudatory headlines, seen the phrase ‘mid-life crisis’ trending on Twitter. Of course we would. But with any luck, these two triumphs and others — there’s an 88-year-old Booker Prize nominee this year for one — will help bring about an end to the extremely unhelpful phrase. Because nobody, no matter what their life situation, should be made to feel like they cannot switch things up at whatever stage they like, and worse, that in trying to do so, they are having a crisis. I never, ever thought of myself as someone who would be advocating for even more use of the execrable tech-ism that is ‘pivot’; but if the mid-life pivot can supersede the mid-life crisis, if people thinking they are pivoting rather than crisis-ing means they continue to reach for the stars, then I am all in. Life doesn’t begin at 40 any more, it just carries on through one’s 40s, and 50s and beyond, until such time that it ends.
Or to employ a more clichéd term: more than ever before, it’s never too late. Not for you, not for me and certainly not for Kwasi Kwarteng, whom I would urge to consider not giving up on his dreams of becoming an arsonist. Oh wait: he hasn’t…