White Dwarf Starlet / Theater

• It's strongly implied that Margo in Applause is headed in this direction, lampshaded by a review which describes her as "discreetly lit by all the pink gelatin on Broadway." (Light filtered through pink "gels" can make people appear younger; if a production uses enough of them for you to notice, it's a sign that one of the actors is too old to play the role they're in.)
• Gloria Mitchell from By The Way Meet Vera Stark is one of these.
• Grizabella the Glamour Cat from Cats. Also Gus the Theatre Cat, the elderly veteran who breaks down crying reminiscing about the star he once was.
• The Drowsy Chaperone: Beatrice Stockwell, the actress who plays the Chaperone, is implied to be one of these in the years since the record was made. It's said that she had a great love of "rousing anthems", although by the end of her life "she didn't rouse so much as stupefy".
• Archie Rice, the title character in John Osborne's The Entertainer (later made into a movie with Laurence Olivier in an Oscar-nominated role). A broken-down old vaudevillian in late 1950s England still trying to desperately cling to the last shreds of his fame (which, to hear his family tell it, may only have ever existed in Archie's mind) while trying just as determinedly to ignore his family's disintegration around him. It's more explicit in the film version, where Archie's an obviously terrible performer who's openly heckled by his audiences and coasts on his father's reputation.
• The Stephen Sondheim musical Follies is full of elderly showgirls. Though most of the songs are period pastiches, "I'm Still Here," an anthem to ex-stardom, practically sums up this trope. Some poignant lyrics include:
  "First you're another
  Sloe-eyed vamp,
  Then someone's mother,
  Then you're camp.
  Then you career from career
  To career.
  I'm almost through my memoirs.
  And I'm here."
• Shelly "The Machine" Levine from Glengarry Glen Ross was once his firm's top salesman but has become over-the-hill and becomes desperate to keep his job.
• Meg Giry in Love Never Dies is a very young example, being only around her late 20s-early 30s. In the original show and novel, she is the lead dancer of the corps de ballet with a promising career ahead of her. However, in this story ten years later she is a washed-up stripper who longs to return to her glory days and wants the Phantom to turn her into a star as he did Christine. It's pretty much all downhill from there.
  • Carlotta from the original The Phantom of the Opera is similar to this; it's said by many both in the theater and its attendants that she's seasons past her prime, but her name still gives many shows popularity. She does not take kindly to Christine coming in and rapidly becoming more popular than she is.
• Stella Spotlight from the Franco-Canadian musical Starmania is a textbook example, particularly in her song Les Adieux d'un Sex Symbol.
• Norma Desmond again in the Broadway musical version of Sunset Boulevard.

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