Female Supremacy Articles - Page 18

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When Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins played lovers in the 1988 baseball film Bull Durham, the couple began to hit it off in their private lives as well. Susan admits their age-gap has broadened her horizons. "When you're with someone from a different generation it can be so stimulating.

"Tim's taste in music, his love of [ice] hockey - it opens you up to new experiences."

• JOAN COLLINS AND PERCY GIBSON

Age difference: 32 years

Joan Collins made headlines when she began a romance with then 35-year-old theatre company manager Percy Gibson - and one of the questions the couple constantly faced was that of their three-decade age gap.

"I'm not going to be so naïve as to pretend we didn't spend a lot of time discussing that very issue," Percy said. "But it's a damn shame for two people so happy together to make the difference in age the reason for not being together."

And his glamorous wife agrees. "I've always felt age shouldn't be a chronological issue," she says. "I know that I look and act a lot younger than I am... I'm much more secure in myself than many girls in their twenties."

And besides, she quips, reversing the common argument in order to have the last laugh over her detractors, "If he dies, he dies."

• MADONNA AND GUY RITCHIE

Age difference: Ten years

Thirty-four-year-old film director Guy Ritchie says his life with one of the world's biggest pop stars is "just like anyone else's, except we don't go off to nine-to-five jobs".