86 Years Old Females

A veteran actress with a career spanning over half a century, Ali MacGraw first came to prominence in the 1970s after acting in many popular action and romantic films. She was also active on the stage and in TV shows. Besides acting, she has been an animal rights advocate throughout her life.

Farah Pahlavi was the Shahbanu of Iran from 1961 to 1979, as the wife of Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Though she was not allowed to hold a political role, she worked for many charities and helped found Iran's first American-style university. She has continued her involvement in charity work even after her husband’s death in 1980. 

Stella Stevens is an American actress best known for playing important roles in popular films, such as Girls! Girls! Girls! and The Nutty Professor. Renowned for her good looks, Stevens was one of the world's most photographed women during the 1960s. She also appeared in Playboy pictorials and was adjudged Playmate of the Month in January 1960.

Norwegian actress-film director Liv Ullmann is counted among the greatest European actresses. She is best-known for her roles in films like The Emigrants and Face to Face, both of which earned her Oscar nomination, and the former won her a Golden Globe She received an Honorary Academy Award. Her second directorial feature-film Faithless was nominated for Palme d'Or in 2000.

Liberian politician, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, served as the 24th President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. She was the first elected female head of state in Africa. An alumnus of the Harvard University, she began her political career in the 1970s and rose through the ranks with time. She is the recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Juliet Hulme, better known as Anne Perry, is the bestselling author of the widely popular William Monk and Thomas Pitt series of novels. She changed her name after a 5-year sentence for killing her friend’s mother at age 15. She has also worked as a flight attendant.

Lola Van Wagenen is an American historian who is credited with co-founding non-profit educational organizations like Consumer Action Now (CAN) and Clio Visualizing History, Inc. Consumer Action Now went on to establish several environmental education and consumer-oriented programs in an attempt to raise awareness about the effects of consumers' buying habits on the environment.

Twelve-time Grammy-winning gospel singer Shirley Caesar is also known as The First Lady of Gospel. She began her music career with The Caravans and later went solo, releasing phenomenal hits such as Faded Rose and I Remember Mama. She also established a non-profit to serve the needy.

British playwright Caryl Churchill is best-known for works that emphasize on feminist-issues, sexual-politics and abuses of power. Most renowned works of Churchill, who also gained attention for using non-naturalistic techniques, include the farce Cloud 9 about sexual politics; the play Top Girls that deals with feminist issues; and the satirical play Serious Money that was largely written in rhyming couplets.

The daughter of actor Thora Hird, Janette Scott began her career as a child artist. She later appeared in films such as The Day of the Triffids. She penned her memoir at 14 and was the youngest actor to portray Peter Pan. She quit her career after marrying Mel Tormé.

English author Margaret Drabble mostly writes about women protagonists and their experiences through marriage, motherhood, and intellectual development. Her novels such as The Gates of Ivory and A Summer Bird-Cage have earned her honors such as the DBE. She is the younger sister of novelist A.S. Byatt.

Tessa Kennedy is a British interior designer who works for prominent hotels, restaurants, multi-national corporations, clubs, celebrities, and royalty. She is credited with establishing her own company Tessa Kennedy Design, Ltd., which has received many design accolades. Tessa Kennedy made headlines in 1957 when she eloped with English portrait painter Bede Evelyn Dominick Elwes.

Ada Yonath is an Israeli crystallographer. She is best known for her work on the structure of the ribosome, for which she received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz. The first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize, she occupies the Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professorial Chair at the Weizmann Institute.  

Beate Klarsfeld is a Franco-German journalist best known for her work as a Nazi hunter. Beate and her husband Serge Klarsfeld achieved popularity for their documentation of many Nazi war criminals, including Alois Brunner, Kurt Lischka, Klaus Barbie, and Kurt Asche. Over the years, Beate Klarsfeld has been honored with numerous prestigious awards, including National Jewish Book Award.

Michèle Mercier is a French actress best known for playing Angélique Sancé de Monteloup in the 1964 historical romance film Angélique, Marquise des Anges. Over the course of her illustrious career, Mercier has worked with prominent directors like Dino Risi, François Truffaut, Mario Monicelli, and Ken Annakin. She has also appeared alongside popular actors like Marcello Mastroianni and Charles Bronson.

Renata Adler is an author, journalist, and film critic who has been a staff writer-reporter for The New Yorker. She studied comparative literature at Harvard University and later received a J.D. from Yale Law School. Despite not being much knowledgeable about films, she became a film critic for The New York Times. She has also written many books. 

Internationally renowned children’s book author and illustrator Lena Anderson began working in the publishing industry at age 16 and first gained fame with her book Linnea in Monet's Garden, which was one of her many collaborations with author Christina Björk. She is known for creating her much-loved character Maja.

Polish writer and painter Roma Ligocka, who fled from the Kraków Ghetto during German occupation of Poland in Second World War, is best known for her works as a successful set designer in theatre, film and television, and for her memoir The Girl in the Red Coat. Other novels of Ligocka include Znajoma z lustre and Kobieta w podróży.