>You're making it seem as though the birth dates are published for the sole purpose of harassing small time actors to deprive them of roles, instead of just having general records available. If uncredited extra roles have a place on IMDB, so do birth dates.
That's the side effect of publishing birth dates. I didn't create the ageism in the business, nor the "go-to" status of imdb for casting professionals. imdb's birthdate policy is an ongoing problem in the industry. Imdb claims free speech and freedom of info act, actors are horrified that their ages (whether incorrectly or correctly reported) are emblazoned on a popular website for all (the public and agents alike) to see.
From
http://www.stephonfuller.blogspot.com/ "Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Today I was a member of a roundtable session with executives from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) along with about a dozen other actors. We discussed what IMDB is to us, as individuals, how we use it, what we wish it would do that it currently doesnâ??t, etc.
The biggest topic was, of course, the â??age thingâ??. Why do they list our date of birth? Why wonâ??t they remove it if requested? It doesnâ??t affect me so much, because early on, back in the day, I entered my own date of birth June 28th, 19?? They acknowledged that having the age displayed can cost an actor a job in some situations; especially women. Theyâ??re trying to figure out a way to make everyone happy. Maybe placing it somewhere else within the profile and not on the front page could be an option. Maybe giving the actor control over it; Iâ??m not sure I see that happening. The thing is that the casual viewer and some industry professionals do want to know an actors actual age. Theyâ??re trying to please many different groups of people. Iâ??m not sure what the answer is, but they are looking into coming up with some sort of solution."
I'm not sure how publishing ages "pleases everyone." It's doing the opposite, especially for the actors, who make up a significant percentage of the website's existence.
Updated On: 2/14/10 at 07:28 AM