Mariann Aalda may be turning 76 on May 7, but to her, age is nothing more than a number.
The former daytime star (Didi, Edge of Night; Lena, Sunset Beach) has had a long and successful career in film and television, and her star continues to rise in her golden years.
Aalda has been an aging activist for the past 20 years, recognized by AARP as an “age disruptor” and she’s also hosted a successful pro-age TEDx Talk, championing the careers of older women.
“I have a vested interest in this obviously because as an actor, I want to work,” she says. “I had a great career for 30 years, but when I hit my 50s, I wasn’t working as much. I had to make a living, so I became a hypnotherapist. I got a chance to work with women and see first-hand the harm that it was doing not seeing themselves reflected in the media in positive ways.”
What she was seeing was a lot of women suffering from mid-life depression, and Aalda found it was her job to dehypnotize them from the trance she feels we are all under in this culture—that women lose value with age.
“We are living longer so that prime period from 18-32 is maybe 25 percent of a woman’s life, so to say that when we reach 35, we are over the hill…if you are not aging, you’re dying, so why are we so afraid of getting older and making it something negative,” she says. “If you’re feeling invisible, find a way to shine. Find your passion and purpose.”
It Started in Daytime
Reflecting back, Aalda has fond memories of her daytime years, especially her three years as Didi Bannister Stoner on Edge of Night.
“What really stands out to me was the camaraderie; we shot the show from top to bottom, so all of the actors were there all day, so that made us all close,” she says. “I’m still in touch with Sharon Gabet [Raven], I’m still in touch with Jennifer Taylor [Chris Egan]. There were real friendships made on the show.”
She remembers her first screen test for Didi, an 11-page scene, and she was the fourth of four actresses to read for the role.
“Unbeknownst to me, the show lays down the music tracks during the scene, not in post, so I’m doing my scene, and all of a sudden I hear this sexy oboe,” Aalda says. “I’m very musical by nature and so it changed my delivery so I’m playing the music of the scene and I think that’s what got me the job.”
One of her favorite memories was when Didi was put in a straightjacket to be sent off to a mental institution; the show was running short, so she had to milk the scene while being strapped to a gurney, improvising to show the character’s craziness. She got a round of applause from the crew after that.
Aalda also enjoyed her time working for Sunset Beach, playing the mother of Vanessa Hart (Sherri Saum), though her character Lena was suffering from a mysterious illness called Martin’s Syndrome, so had to spend most of her scenes in a hospital bed.
“I had a reaction to the stuff they put on my face,” she says. “Though I loved working with Sherri, Jason George [Michael] and Russell Curry [Tyus]. And at the end of the show, they brought me back and it was just a great experience.”
These days, Aalda gets her soap fix playing Violet Givens, who was introduced in Season 8 of The Bay. Executive producer Gregori J. Martin has greatly expanded that role in Season 9, which starts shooting in May, and she can’t wait.
“This season I am in seven of the 10 episodes,” she says. “I’m working with A Martinez [ex-Roy, General Hospital; ex-Eduardo, Days of our Lives] and Réal Andrews [Taggert, GH], and there’s a lot of good stuff going on.”
After leaving daytime, Aalda worked regularly on TV, nabbing guest spots on shows such as Designing Women, Family Matters and Chicago Hope. In 1991, she was cast as the daughter of the legendary Redd Foxx and Della Reese in The Royal Family, a return to TV for the former star of Sanford and Son.
These days, Aalda dabbles in standup comedy and feels Foxx has passed the baton to her and would be proud.
A Career Resurgence
Over the past year, Aalda has been as busy as ever, and she’s proving that her age doesn’t matter.
“Film and television are just now really starting to take notice of this older female audience and the need for better storytelling,” she says. “I think daytime has always done a better job of it, though.”
During the pandemic, Aalda connected with Tamieka Briscoe, a 40-something black female writer-producer, on the audio app Clubhouse. They met in a room that was Hollywood-focused, with young writers talking about wanting to make changes in Hollywood.
“I would go into these rooms, representing the older women, and I would say to them, ‘according to a 2017 Federal Reserve study on women finances, women over 50 control 70 percent of the wealth of this county,’ so when you do not include a nuanced, layered, interesting, vibrant older woman in your scripts, you are leaving money on the table,” Aalda says.
Briscoe heard her words and wrote a screenplay called Spawns, with Aalda in mind to play the badass older female lead, complete with a seductive bedroom scene.
“She knew that if we don’t solve this ageism problem now, she would be facing it when she was my age,” says Aalda, who starred alongside Eric Roberts (ex-Ted, AW) and Miguel Nunez in the film. “It’s important to see older women having a love life, having romance and having sex. A woman’s sexual well-being is very important to one’s mental health. It has an impact on self-esteem, confidence and the way she sees herself in this world.”
Spawns had a great critical response—especially the aforementioned scene—and was accepted into Cannes this year.
Another of those who heard Aalda due to the Clubhouse connection was Geno Brooks, who had gotten money from Netflix to do eight short films using new writer/directors, and cast Aalda in Gumbo, a film by Jess Waters, which followed a determined Black food journalist and a jaded Lyft driver who search for a rare gumbo recipe that could save both of their careers.
“I looked Jess’s bio up online, and they said that ‘as a young, Black, nonbinary queer female,’ they felt that representation was very important,” Aalda says. “In the script, the character I would play was 60 and you see her come to the door in a muumuu. Geno set up a Zoom between us, and I told them I love the script, but as an old, Black female, representation is important to me, and I told them a muumuu was such a stereotype. Could she be wearing yoga pants and a kimono? They said ‘yes,’ and on-set, we had a great discussion about how sometimes marginalized groups don’t recognize how they are marginalizing other groups.”
But that’s not all. Aalda also recently appeared in the short film, To Grieve or Not to Grieve, written and directed by Donald Watson, which follows older adults finding love later in life. She and Watson, her on-screen acting partner, took home the award for Best Duo at the 2023 L.A. Film Festival.
“To see a little romance, or touching, moving scenes with two older people, we don’t see often enough,” she says.
Aalda is enjoying being busy and looks forward to more opportunities in the year ahead.
