Paper title "Badass Moms: Aging maternity in Taymor's Tempest and Fiennes’ Coriolanus" This paper examines the portrayal and significance of aging mothers in Taymor’s The Tempest(2010) and Fiennes’ Coriolanus(2012). I argue that, drawing on popular film genres and networks of imagery (e.g. of the military, of royalty), these films appropriate Prospera and Volumnia to offer interventions in current debates on women in power, working mothers, and female aging. As both of these Shakespearean mothers is played by a senior doyenne of stage and screen, casting will be discussed in relation to the films’ interrogations of contemporary perceptions of maternity and female aging.