Lesley Manville has praised the comedy series Mum for its “refreshing” depiction of middle-aged love.
The 63-year-old, who plays recently widowed Cathy in the BBC Two sitcom, said the TV and film industry often failed to show women in their 50s and 60s on screen.
But she told the Press Association her latest role in Mum was accurate in showing the “unglamorous” but “normal” reality of love in later life.
She said: “One thing that is so good (about Mum), I think, is it’s a story about middle-aged people falling in love, and very sweetly, a lot of the time just looking like teenagers because this whole new fizzy thing is happening to them.”
She added: “That’s not dealt with very much in telly and films, or in Hollywood it’s all kind of ‘aren’t they still sexy at 50’ or 60, actually, aren’t we? Ten years wiped off!
“But it’s all glamorous, and they’ve all still got to look great. And it (Mum) is real, it’s normal, it’s the unglamorous thing about being with somebody for the first time, or the relationship being new.
“And Cathy and Michael are such secure people, it doesn’t matter that Michael turns up and sees her in her worst mum jeans, and terrible slippers, it doesn’t matter, none of that matters, and that’s very refreshing.”
Mum returns to BBC Two on May 15.