The Dark Knight Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal yesterday spoke out against the plight faced by female actors in modern Hollywood, which stretches back through decades of male leads' love interests being portrayed by women half their age.
There are things that are really disappointing about being an actress in Hollywood that surprise me all the time,
the Oscar- nominated actress told The Wrap.
I’m 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh.
At the Cannes film festival earlier this week, the creators of drug-war thriller Sicario revealed the pressure they had come under from producers since the film's conception to rewrite the lead role - an FBI agent played by Emily Blunt - to make the character male. This, after research last year found that less than a quarter of crew members involved in making 2,000 of the biggest-grossing films over the past two decades were women.
Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union announced it would demand that state and federal agencies investigate why major studio regularly fail to hire female directors - regardless of potential or experience - for movies, citing “rampant discrimination” in the Hollywood.
Meanwhile, a report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television, Film & New Media at San Diego State University found that female actors took just 12% of leading roles in the USA's top 100 domestic-grossing films of 2014.
Gyllenhaal, who perhaps rather aptly plays the lead role in BBC's The Honourable Woman, declined to name the production or the 55-year-old actor she aimed to star alongside, but said she still remains optimistic that female roles in Hollywood will continue to improve.
A lot of actresses are doing incredible work right now, playing real women, complicated women. I don’t feel despairing at all. And I’m more looking with hope for something fascinating.
H/T: The Guardian
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