Although the situation have been gradually getting better in recent years, with more female-lead films being created such as ‘Bridesmaids’, they are still greatly outweighed by the amount of male-lead films and most lead characters are male no matter what the genre. These 5 actresses have spoken on how hard it is for them to find good female roles, ones with depth and real meaning, because often women aren’t central to films and can be a bit two dimensional or in the background of the story. Here is what they’ve said on the subject.
Audrey Tautou
Audrey thinks it’s very hard to find a script that has strong female characters: “It’s not easy or common to find very interesting and central female characters; I try to get those parts though because I’m not interested in playing a part where she serves soup to the guy.”
Keira thinks most movies are made with white males in mind and women after overlooked: “The people who make movies, whether it’s directors or producers or money people, look for things that they can identify with and if they’re all predominantly middle-aged white men, then what you see are things that middle-aged white men can identify with. And you don’t get anything for anybody else.”
Michelle Monaghan
Michelle thinks women aren’t fairly represented on screen: “It’s ridiculous, and it’s such a shame. People ask me, ‘How did you play such a tough woman?’ and I tell them, ‘I am a tough woman!’ I’m tough, I’m vulnerable, I’m independent, I’m strong, and I’m nurturing, and most of the women I know are, but unfortunately you only see a couple of sides of women reflected in most films.”
Olivia Wilde
Olivia thinks Hollywood need to work harder to represent more types of people, including women: “We have to do a better job of representing different lifestyles and women in empowered roles because literally everyone is seeing this stuff that we [in Hollywood] put out. So we have to be more responsible for what we do put out.”
Reese recently released how few female lead roles there are and she was shocked: “Other than one studio, literally one, nobody was developing anything with a female lead. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. And I was so mad. And then I thought: ‘Why am I so upset about this? Why don’t I do something about it?’ ”
