The Top 15 Movies With "Cougar" Characters

The Top 15 Movies With "Cougar" Characters

We're not huge fans of the word "cougar" — used, for the most part, to try to humiliate women who date younger men (their "prey," known as cubs). But for better or worse, it's in the lexicon, which means that the idea that older women can still be sexy — and sexual — is out there, too. The following group of films shows that the cougar's been around in popular culture for a while, that cougar/cub desire is a two-way street, and that these couplings can be good, bad, or downright scary.

— Additional reporting by Barbara Herman

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1. Sunset Boulevard

Not many people who have seen this (including myself) remember that Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) — delusional, vain, and ready for her close-up — had a younger man friend. Who could remember him? She was too fabulous!

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2. Harold and Maude

"Young, rich, and obsessed with death, Harold finds himself changed forever when he meets lively septuagenarian Maude at a funeral." (Now there's a synopsis!) They consummate their relationship at some point, but this May/December romance shows, more importantly, that age is but a number when eccentricity is the tie that binds two weirdos together.

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3. The Graduate

What cracks me up about what might be the first film to really begin the cougar stereotype, The Graduate, is that Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) is supposed to be a fresh-faced college graduate. (Hoffman was 30 at the time.) And the aggressive older woman, Mrs. Robinson, who seduced him and was played by Anne Bancroft — she was 36 at the time!

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4. My Tutor

The title is pretty self-explanatory, but check it out — this 1983 film features young cub Crispin Glover!

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5. Class

When Rob Lowe was still considered a cub — but not to Jacqueline Bisset's cougar, who plays his mother in the film. Andrew McCarthy got that lucky gig.

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6. Thelma & Louise

"Someone said get a life . . . so they did." Part of getting a life after leaving your husband, apparently, involves a younger, shirtless Brad Pitt. Can't argue with that.

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7. How Stella Got Her Groove Back

Sorry, but no matter what your age, Taye Diggs would help you get your groove back!

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8. White Palace

The tagline for this movie starring Susan Sarandon as a waitress who enters into a very hot relationship with a young widower is: "The story of a younger man and a bolder woman." Hey, we'll take bolder over older.

(Sarandon also plays a hottie older woman in Bull Durham, opposite Tim Robbins — who was her real-life partner at the time. Sexay!)

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9. Y Tu Mamá También

Ay, caramba! This movie is amazing — part coming-of-age film, part road trip, part melodrama, and sexy as all get out. No matter how, uh, surprising the erotic scene is between Ana (Ana Lopez Mercado), Tenoch (Diego Luna), and his buddy Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) — there's humour and tenderness there. It doesn't hurt that everyone involved is painfully beautiful.

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10. Tadpole

Fifteen-year-old Oscar falls in love with his stepmother, Eve, played by Sigourney Weaver. How many taboos does this film take on?

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11. Laurel Canyon

Frances McDormand, as usual, rocks in this film. In fact, she plays a rock music producer who's finishing up recording her (younger) boyfriend's band's album. Maybe because it's directed by a woman (Lisa Cholodenko), their age difference and relationship isn't really a big deal in the movie.

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12. Heading South (Vers Le Sud)

Oy. Leave it to the French to bypass the "scandal" of older women/younger men and get to something even more loaded: race. Charlotte Rampling plays an older French woman who goes on a sex tour to Haiti to hook up with younger men for cash and gifts. This movie shows that when economics are involved, there's a difference in how women can exploit men — but it still feels like exploitation.

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13. The Piano Teacher

Perhaps because Europeans aren't as uptight as Americans about the older woman/younger man couple, they can be a little more out there in exploring its pathologies in interesting ways. In this French-language film set in Vienna, Erika (the magnificent Isabelle Huppert) is seduced by her piano student Walter (Benoit Magimel). Little does he know she's got some crazy mommy issues, that she's a masochist, and that he's in for more than he bargained for. Most definitely not a feel-good cougar movie!

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14. Sex and the City

The television-show-turned-movie that kinda glamourized and kinda pathologized cougars. And shopping. And friendship. And basically everything having to do with women.

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15. American Pie

Two words: "Stifler's mom."

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