Actress IDs herself in age lawsuit

SEATTLE – An actress who filed an anonymous lawsuit against Amazon.com and its Internet Movie Database for revealing her age identified herself in a federal court filing Friday.

Huong Hoang, of Texas, may be better known by her stage name, Junie Hoang. She has appeared in such films as “Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver” and “Hoodrats 2: Hoodrat Warriors.”

The actress filed a million-dollar claim against Amazon last fall, saying the company mined her IMDb account to learn her age, 40, and then posted it on her profile – causing her offers for roles to dry up.

The lawsuit caused a frenzy of online speculation over who the actress might be – as well as a bit of soul-searching about ageism in youth-obsessed Hollywood.

Women over 40 make up 24.3 percent of the U.S. population, but a casting analysis by the Screen Actors Guild showed actresses over 40 get just 12.5 percent of roles for television and film. Men of that age are also about a quarter of the population, but nearly equal their ranks in casting.

Last month a federal judge in Seattle ordered the lawsuit dismissed, saying the actress had no grounds to proceed with an anonymous complaint. Hoang refiled it under her real name.

She did not immediately return an email seeking comment, nor did her lawyer immediately return a voice message left after business hours.