By the late 1990s and 2000s, the trend had solidified into a visual shorthand for success. In As Good as It Gets (1997), a 60-year-old Jack Nicholson wins the heart of a 34-year-old Helen Hunt. In Entrapment (1999), Sean Connery, at age 69, plays a romantic lead opposite a 30-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones. The age gap was rarely written into the plot; audiences were simply expected to accept that a man in his senior years naturally pairs with a woman in her twenties or early thirties. Narrative Mechanics: Why Media Relies on the Trope
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