Few cultural crimes seem more unforgivable than ageing in public. Rachel Ward has learned this the hard way. Forever frozen in the collective imagination as the luminous Meggie Cleary from The Thorn Birds, Ward has had to defend the simple fact that she no longer looks as she did four decades ago. Her offence? Existing at 66 without attempting cosmetically to reverse time. That this still requires explanation in 2026 is astonishing yet depressingly familiar. Ward’s “crime” is not that she looks old but that she looks different from the memories people have of her, memories preserved in amber. It’s as if actors have a moral duty to remain visually consistent with our nostalgia.

Other actresses have come to her defence, perhaps because they recognise the terrain all too well. Sharon Stone called Ward “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them all. Then,........

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