Here’s something that’s been said exactly zero times before: It’s a good time to be old in Hollywood.

I first noticed the trend late last year when Jane Fonda started showing up pretty much everywhere. She and Lily Tomlin followed the triumphant finale of their groundbreaking sit-com “Grace and Frankie” with a deceptively winning little black comedy called “Moving On,” which let the old friends tap into their deeper acting chops. Then in February came the genial and geriatric Super Bowl comedy “80 for Brady,” which I boycotted on peevish principle. (That principle being: Tom Brady already has enough women adoring him, much less four legendary knockouts nearly twice his age. (It’s true: Fonda, Tomlin, Rita Moreno and Sally Field were an average age of 84 when that film was released on Feb. 3.)

But when I read “80 for Brady” was based on four real lifelong Patriots fans who made it their end-of-life mission to go to the Super Bowl (tickets be damned), I gave in to shlock and sentiment. And later that night, my Facebook page became my public confessional:

“I saw ‘80 for Brady.’ And I liked it. There, I said it. I cannot be shamed.”

I can’t believe I’m committing this to posterity but … even Brady was good.

I had completely missed the semi-phenomenon of 2018 when Fonda joined fellow film legends Diane Keaton, Candice Bergin and Mary Steenburgen for “Book Club,” a madcap romp (or should that be “walker”?) about four older pals who pick “Fifty Shades of Grey” as their monthly book-club selection. (Then again, I also completely missed the full-blown-phenomenon of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”)

“80 for Brady” fully softened me up for “Moving On” and the May release of the “Book Club” sequel, “The Next Chapter” – which follows the frolicking foursome to Italy. I boldly arrived at the cinema without wearing a cloaking hat or sunglasses. In fact, it was invigorating to be the youngest person in the room again (by a few decades). I laughed. I cried. I cheered at the end. Maybe it’s because my old-lady cat has been given a rather narrow remaining life expectancy, but I found myself suddenly confronting that unanswerable existential question: “What the hell has happened to me?”

Well, Fonda happened to me. Tomlin happened to me. Keaton happened to me. Moreno happened to me. (She, I got to interview for a Denver Gazette story last year and, ever since, I make no apologies for having all the feelings for Rita Moreno.)

I feel no shame because these feel-good films really do make you feel good. They’re not high art, mind you, but they are good, clever fun. And these women are clearly having the time of their late lives. As you watch an unavoidably sweet story like “80 for Brady” drive to its inevitably sweet conclusion like John Elway driving down the field to victory against the Cleveland Browns, your mind can’t help but summon “Coming Home,” “West Side Story,” “Norma Rae” and all the other seminal work these icons have delivered over the decades. They’re still standing in 2023, and, like Elway, they are going out on top. Heck, they outlasted both Elway and Brady.

But what makes all of this significant for this particular cultural moment is that audiences are responding with their dollars. “Book Club” and its sequel earned $132 million at the box office. “80 for Brady” took home $40 million more. A website called thenumbers.com, which ranks celebrities by their current box-office clout, ranks the 85-year-old Fonda higher than Ben Affleck, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Gosling and Will Ferrell.

So here we have these amazing old-guard stars, the kind who are so often tossed into the Hollywood dumpster in their 30s, lifting up a battered film industry that was flattened by the pandemic and nearly flushed by the ickiness of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Danny Masterson, Bryan Singer and (bad) company.

And they have done it by producing wholesome, uplifting stories that empower audiences at a time when the collective we are otherwise going for one another’s jugulars. And believe me, doing it the clean way in Hollywood is not the easy way. I have been mocked as a snob for 14 years for owning and amplifying my disdain for the gross “Hangover” movies. But I was even more deflated by “Bridesmaids” because it was written and performed by women who claimed real economic power by taking in $306 million. With a story that proved – what? That women can be just as gross as men?

Fast-forward to 2023, when Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin (who turned 84 on Friday) are making people laugh without pooping in the sink. And through the underappreciated gem “Grace and Frankie,” they found a way to laugh at the frightening complexities of growing older without signing off by putting one of them in a coffin. Instead, they’re left dancing on a beach. ‘

This hopefully lasting trend of celebrating the continuing star power of aging actors isn’t gender-specific. Look no further than 80-year-old (at the time) Harrison Ford donning Indiana Jones’ fedora one last time in “Dial of Destiny.” While writer Jez Butterworth totally blew it by relegating 71-year-old Karen Allen to the bookends of the story’s final chapter, Ford proved he can still carry a blockbuster to $381 million at the box office. (The irony being, he spent so much of the film artificially made to look 40 years younger.)

Meanwhile, Morgan Freeman is still delivering at 86 in “A Good Person” as a dad who befriends the opioid addict who killed his daughter. Last year, Bill Nighy (73) carried the Oscar-nominated drama “Living.” Judd Hirsh (88), Bill Murray (72) and Rhea Perlman (75) played very big parts in very small roles (“The Fabelmans,” “Asteroid City” and “Barbie”). And one of the great crimes of the TV century is that Carol Burnett (90) did not become the first nonagenarian to win an Emmy Award for her pivotal role in the final season of “Better Call Saul.”

Al Pacino is 83 and has six films in various forms of production. Anthony Hopkins (85) has five, including a starring turn in “Freud’s Last Session” (as well as, ironically, a TV series called “Those About to Die”).

And now here come two very different first-run films that already have leaped into my evolving list of 2023’s best films: “Jules” and “Golda.”

“Jules” (now showing at the Landmark Chez Artiste) is an unassuming little gem of a movie about a gentle Pennsylvania widower who’s starting to become forgetful, so no one is inclined to believe him when he says a UFO has crash-landed in his remote backyard with an alien aboard. It stars Ben Kingsley (79), Jane Curtin (75) and whipper-snapper Harriet Sansom Harris (68). “Jules” hasn’t made a blip at the box office ($1.8 million), but here’s hoping it finds a receptive audience on streaming platforms.

And, to celebrate World Cinema Day (you had me at $4 tickets), I headed to the Sie FilmCenter to see 78-year-old Helen Mirren’s controversial portrayal of chain-smoking Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. “Golda” (through Sept. 7) recounts the tense 19 days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War when Meir, caught underestimating Israel’s enemies, faces the potential annihilation of her 25-year-old nation. While critics have described Mirren’s career-defining portrayal as “decisive” and “ferociously alive,” the film has been dogged by protests over Mirren’s casting given that she’s not a Jew. The term “Jewface” has become an emerging variation on “Blackface,” and is invoked by those who condemn the practice of casting non-Jewish actors in Jewish roles.

This is the kind of movie that is almost always accompanied by Oscar buzz, but the fact that it only has reached $2.4 million at the box office is probably more of a reflection on the casting controversy than the film itself or Mirren’s performance in it.

And I can’t wait for “The Great Escaper,” starring Michael Caine (90) and Glenda Jackson (87). It’s the true story of a man who escapes from his care home to attend the 70th anniversary of D-Day in France. It will be released Oct. 6.

I wish I could say Hollywood executives are smart enough to recognize a winning trend and build on it. If so, they will green-light many more opportunities for actors in their twilight years to deliver performances of their lifetimes. But who am I kidding? A quick look at the Rotten Tomatoes rankings of the 50 best movies of 2023 so far makes the reality plain – not one of them is focused around an older character.

What they are missing is the incredible economic power of our nostalgia, which is on full display in a billion-dollar film like “Barbie,” which fully taps into our emotional connection to a plastic doll. Just imagine our loyalty to real flesh and blood.

For a movie with a lightweight premise that was made for the Hallmark Channel, “80 for Brady” registered an astonishing audience approval score of 89 percent. That surely means keeping actors who have occupied space in our hearts for decades active into their 70s and beyond will keep their fans coming to the cineplex.

In this column alone, I have mentioned 23 of them. They are a combined 1,841 years old, and an average of 80 each. And I, for one, want more of them while we have them.