And while the actress feels everything happens for a reason, her loss of the role only serves to underline the lack of sound reasoning in Hollywood's role allocation for female actors.

Wilde isn't the only actress to speak out over losing out on a role due to ageism - Maggie Gyllenhall said she experienced gender discrimination from a studio, when she was turned down for a film role because at 37, she was deemed "too old" to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. She did not disclose which movie the role was for.

Both stories corroborate a US study released last year which analysed the age difference between on-screen couples in movies from the past 30 years, highlighting that some leading men are up to 15 years older than their female love interests or co-stars. The most depressing part of this statistic being that little has changed in three decades.

Olivia Wilde deemed “too old” to play Leonardo DiCaprio's wife