Lifestyle

Ageing is inevitable, weakness is not - how to foster strength

Annette Bening and Jodie Foster - both aged in their 60s - explode outdated concepts of female beauty in the sports drama NYAD, now streaming on Netflix.

Their sculpted bodies ignite the screen in the movie, which is now streaming on Netflix.

Each actor muscled up for the movie to play real life heroes Diana Nyad - who swum from Cuba to Florida - and Bonnie Stoller. This movie is on Citro's age-positive movie list - give it a watch and enjoy.

Left to right: *NYAD* director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Annette Bening as Diana Nyad, Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll, the real Diana Nyad, the real Bonnie Stoll, Rhys Ifans as John Bartlett the navigator and director Jimmy Chin on the set of *NYAD*. Cr. Kimberley French/Netflix ©2023

Nyad tells an epic true story of the physical, mental and financial obstacles Diana Nyad - played by Bening - and her coach and best friend Bonnie Stoll - played by Foster - overcame to swim from Cuba to Florida.

Annette Bening and Jodie Foster explode outdated concepts of female beauty in the sports drama Nyad, now streaming on Netflix.

Both actors - aged 65 and 61 respectively at the time of filming- demonstrate cannonball strength, ripped bodies and the jaw-dropping potency of women who don’t need make-up, facial fillers or botox to arrest your gaze.

Watch Annette and Jodie in this scene from the movie.

Nyad tells an epic true story of the physical, mental and financial obstacles that Diana Nyad - played by Bening - and her coach and best friend Bonnie Stoll - played by Foster - overcame to swim from Cuba to Florida.

Both Foster and Bening were inspired by the real women they played.

Nyad, 74, first attempted her marathon swim between Cuba and Florida in the 1970s but failed. She woke up after the age of 60, obsessed with succeeding in her unfinished dream, which she achieved in 2013 after swimming 53 hours straight through box jellyfish and shark-infested waters.

Watch the real Bonnie Stoll bring Diana Nyad in to shore after her record-breaking swim in this news footage from a decade ago.

Stoll, 71, is a former world-class racquetball player who does 100 reps of shoulder, biceps and abdominal work a day along with two-hour power walks.

Foster told NYAD's directors she wanted to join the film in part because she wanted to show audiences 2 older women who were “badasses.”

Annette Bening trained with former Olympian Rada Owen for roughly a year, in addition to hitting the gym with a personal trainer, so that her nerves about the role — including constantly being seen wearing a swimsuit — eventually faded. Cr. Kimberley French/Netflix ©2023

Foster’s first appearance on the set came with a similar jolt of awe for the directors. On the day she agreed to take the role of Stoll, Foster stood on a New York sidewalk after meeting with Bening and told the directors, “I’m going to have to start training tomorrow for this role.”

After that day with Foster on the sidewalk, “We never really heard anything more from her,” NYAD director Jimmy Chin said. “And then she showed up just ripped.”

**Hollywood magazine** ***Variety*** wrote that Foster's acting as Bonnie Stoller in *NYAD* kept people watching the sports biopic. It also wrote: "Wiry and clad in wonky Ray-Ban sports glasses and an ever-present bandanna, Bonnie has all the Foster toughness viewers will recall from films like “*The Silence of the Lambs*” and “*Panic Room*,” but with a twist. That grit and plainspokenness now exists within the context of her character’s queerness. It’s a good look on Foster, not least because her own 2013 saw her grappling with how out she felt comfortable being out.

Foster embarked on a regimen of daily workouts that continued through the film, alternating kettlebells with heavy weightlifting.

She combined it with a sufferingly strict diet that to the directors seemed to consist of “mostly brown rice, chicken and broccoli.”

At the end of the film, she told Stoll, “I hope I never see chicken again.”