ALL HAIL JESSICA Chastain.
Just weeks after throwing shade at Johnny Depp, she’s back criticising the film industry over its portrayal of women.
The two-time Oscar nominee was one of nine jurors at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. At a press conference on Sunday, the actress spoke out about what she described as the “disturbing” representation of women in film.
“This is the first time I’ve watched twenty films in ten days and I love movies,” she told journalists. “And the one thing I really took away from this experience is how the world views women from the female characters that I saw represented and it was quite disturbing to me to be honest.”
There are some exceptions, I will say, but for the most part I was surprised with the representation of female characters on screen in these films and I do hope that when we include more female storytellers we’ll have more of the women that I recognise in my day-to-day life – ones that are proactive, have their own agency, don’t just react to the men around them. They have their own point of view.
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Many women from television and film took to social media to praise Chastain for her remarks and thank her for speaking “truth to power”.
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This is far from the first time that Jessica Chastain has been outspoken on gender issues.
In 2015, the actress penned an essay from the set of The Zookeeper’s Wife about her experience of working with a female director and female-dominated cast and crew.
For me, sex really isn’t the qualifier in the way someone directs — but I just know that when you have a set with predominantly one gender, whether it be all men or all women, it’s not going to be a healthy place. I imagine it’s the same thing in the workforce or other environments: When you have both genders represented, then you have a healthier point of view.
The energy is great, you all are working together as a community, and everyone is participating in the exchange of ideas. You don’t feel a hierarchy; you don’t have anyone feeling like they are being left out or bullied or humiliated. Sometimes being the only girl on a set, you can feel like a sexual object.
And just a few weeks ago, she told Channel 4 about how women can sometimes feel limited by societal expectations.
I think in our society, women are raised thinking that they can’t be in politics, that they can’t be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that they can’t be filmmakers. We’re born as little girls thinking we can do whatever we want and society teaches us otherwise, by showing us otherwise.
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What a woman, eh?
