If you are in your 50s, 40s or even late 30s and feel as though things are rapidly heading south, might I point you in the direction of Apex, the 95-minute action movie that launched last week on Netflix and is currently parked at No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic. You may think Apex, which has almost no dialogue, a paper-thin script and plot holes the size of the Australian outback in which it was filmed, is not for you, but you would be wrong. Next time you make a noise when you get up from the sofa, you can visualise Charlize Theron free-climbing a cliff face in peak middle age and remind yourself these things are still possible.

What’s startling about this is that Theron, at 50, appears to have successfully outrun the Hollywood dead end that greets women on their 34th birthday. She could be unrecognisable from surgery while clinging to the reboot of some earlier role. She could be trapped in Yorgos Lanthimos-style whimsy, because what could be more whimsical and grotesque than an ageing female actor? She could be playing someone’s mother – specifically, the mother of a male actor some five years her junior. Instead,........

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