Anna Chancellor: Boom times for the mature actress Wednesday sees the return to BBC Two of The Hour, the Abi Morgan drama set in a newsroom in the Fifties. Despite the presence of two of the best actors in the country - Dominic West and Ben Whishaw - I never really got this programme. But I shall probably watch it for the wonderful, womanly performance by Anna Chancellor as a smoky-eyed, seen-it-all journalist. Thinking of Chancellor, who quite rightly works a great deal, I started to consider the pervasive cliché which says that actresses over the age of 40 no longer get any parts. I thought about Lesley Sharp, Amelia Bullmore, Samantha Bond, Sarah Lancashire, Sylvestra le Touzel, Gina McKee, Helena Bonham-Carter, Kristin Scott Thomas, Elizabeth McGovern, Gillian Anderson, Emily Watson and Tilda Swinton. Over 60 is a different game for actresses, but even so I also thought about Helen Mirren, Anne Reid, Julie Walters, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Eileen Atkins. As you will probably gather, what I was really thinking was how lovely it would be if this particular cliché could be laid to rest. Forthwith. Nobody today believes that women turn 40 and start wearing Playtex girdles, so why - when a luscious creature like Rachel Weisz is interviewed about her latest Hollywood role - must the questioning focus with such beady cunning upon her age? Sometimes the actresses themselves are to blame. One reads a great deal of moaning about the hopelessly ageist industry, the way that the work stops when the first wrinkle arrives; and it is true that some areas of film and television are obsessed with youth. It seems to me, though, that "older" women are everywhere, exerting a tremendous fascination upon all but the silliest audiences. Sex and the City is now being unfavourably, and unfairly, compared with new kid on the block Girls, but its appeal was actually intensified by the visible vulnerability of its stars to the passing of time. As for Helen McCrory's recent performance in ITV's Leaving, as the 40-plus woman helplessly in love with a younger man: only maturity could have given it that astounding depth.