Matrix Star Carrie-Anne Moss Says She Was Offered a 'Grandmother' Role After Her 40th Birthday

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Carrie-Anne Moss has faced her own share of ageism and misogyny in Hollywood.

The Matrix star, 53, recently revealed that she was offered a grandmother role the day after her 40th birthday. Moss recounted the story while moderating a conversation for New York's 92nd Street Y with Justine Bateman about her book Face: One Square Foot of Skin.

"I had heard that at 40 everything changed. I didn't believe in that because I don't believe in just jumping on a thought system that I don't really align with," she said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Moss continued, "But literally the day after my 40th birthday, I was reading a script that had come to me and I was talking to my manager about it. She was like, 'Oh, no, no, no, it's not that role [you're reading for], it's the grandmother.' I may be exaggerating a bit, but it happened overnight. I went from being a girl to the mother to beyond the mother."

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Moss also noted the dramatic difference in how male actors are treated as they age, adding that she didn't want to have to change herself for the industry though it was "kind of brutal" witnessing the transition in her career.

"You don't feel like you've aged much and suddenly you're seeing yourself onscreen," she said. "I would look at these French and European actresses and they just had something about them that felt so confident in their own skin. I couldn't wait to be that. I strive for that. It's not easy being in this business. There's a lot of external pressure."

The star recently reunited with Keanu Reeves to revive her role as Trinity in the untitled fourth Matrix film, which wrapped production in November. "I never thought that it would happen. It was never on my radar at all," she told Empire Magazine last June.

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"When it was brought to me in the way that it was brought to me, with incredible depth and all of the integrity and artistry that you could imagine, I was like, 'This is a gift,' " she said. "It was just very exciting."

Lana Wachowski, who wrote and directed the first three films with Lilly Wachowski, returns to helm the next chapter, which is due to premiere Dec. 22 in theaters and on HBO Max.