Russell Crowe is facing criticism after appearing to suggest that older female actors should only play roles suitable for their age.

In an interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly before Christmas, but which appears to have flown under the radar until this week, Crowe said that all older actors – male and female – were able to pick up roles provided they did not expect to play characters in their 20s. His comments fly in the face of complaints from actors, such as Rosanna Arquette, who have suggested that roles dried up in Hollywood once they hit a certain age.

“To be honest, I think you’ll find that the woman who is saying that [the roles have dried up] is the woman who at 40, 45, 48, still wants to play the ingenue, and can’t understand why she’s not being cast as the 21-year-old,” said Crowe. “Meryl Streep will give you 10,000 examples and arguments as to why that’s bullshit, so will Helen Mirren, or whoever it happens to be. If you are willing to live in your own skin, you can work as an actor. If you are trying to pretend that you’re still the young buck when you’re my age, it just doesn’t work.”

He added: “I have heard of an actress, part of her fee negotiation was getting the number of children she was supposed to have lessened. Can you believe this? This (character) was a woman with four children, and there were reasons why she had to have four children – mainly, she lived in a cold climate and there was nothing to do but fornicate all day – so quit arguing, just play the role!”

Act your age ... Russell Crowe (right) with Dylan Georgiades in The Water Diviner Photograph: Allstar/Fear of God Films/Sportsphoto Ltd

However, writing on the feminist site Jezebel, blogger Rebecca Rose wrote: “ALERT: Hollywood movie actor person Russell Crowe is fed up with all the old ladies who dare to want to be cast as something other than old spinsters or whatnot.

“Quit complaining that you’re cast in a role where your character has ‘nothing to do but fornicate all day’ and make a bunch of babies. Stop demanding that film-makers try to expand the depth of your character beyond ‘broodmare’. Just play the role, OK?

“Funny how Crowe doesn’t bother to offer any opinion about the mind-boggling legacy of Hollywood men playing romantic leads to women 10, 20, 30, and sometimes 40 (!!!!!) years younger than them,” Rose added. “Because it’s clearly the sad old women daring to pretend they are outside their actual birth ages that are ruining Hollywood … Thanks Crowe for reminding us, yet again, that women are always held in contempt for doing anything remotely similar to what their male counterparts do without reproach.”

Blogger Amy Gray, writing on Junkee.com, quoted a 2013 gender diversity report highlighting the difficulties for older women working in Hollywood. She wrote: “The ‘ingenue’ roles Crowe refers to are the only ones readily available for women; on the flip side, the majority of male characters in film and TV are aged between their 30s (27%) and 40s (31%). That could be because we’re more likely to want to watch lead characters based on their fuckability – and the older a woman gets, as any executive will tell you, the less fuckable she becomes.”

Crowe, 50, is currently promoting his new film The Water Diviner, in which he plays a father who heads to Turkey in 1919 to look for his three sons, who fought in the battle of Gallipoli. “The point is, you do have to be prepared to accept that there are stages in life. So I can’t be the Gladiator forever,” he said.

The New Zealand born actor added: “It’s like my friend, Eli Roth, told me: It’s not the 43 years in front of the camera, it’s not the 25 years doing lead roles, you’ll find the thing that gives you the empathy, the power, when you’re making this film is the fact that you’re a father.”