It is the turn of Geena Davis, Oscar-winning actress who played in Thelma and Louise or Voyageur in spite of himself, to speak out on the sexism of Hollywood.
In an interview given during the Allison Interviews podcast of Allison Kugel, the Oscar-winning actress for Voyageur despite himself was able to confide in her fed up with the sexism and youthism of Hollywood . If one industry in particular seems to be a basket of crabs in the face of these questions of discrimination, it is the cinema industry, cradle of the MeToo movement in 2017 with the Weinstein affair.
Geena Davis thus deplored the behavior of several actors (without naming them) and explained the sad vision of the film industry on the differences between actresses and actors:
“It’s really weird and it’s everywhere like that. A certain male actor was making a movie, I wanted to participate, and he said I was too old to be his onscreen partner, when well even I was twenty years younger than him. ”
She went on to explain why this is not an exception, but rather a standard in Hollywood:
“Women are at their peak in their twenties, or thirties, and men in their forties, fifties or even older. So star actors who are men want to appear younger than they are, or they want to attract younger people, so they want a co-star by their side who’s very young. That’s what happens all the time and that’s why women don’t have a lot of roles after 40 or 50. C it’s because they’re deemed too old to be romantic partners onscreen. ”
According to the actress, women over 50 have only a tiny fraction of the roles, around 20% , in Hollywood. Minor and often stereotypical roles (will Hollywood manage to make Aunt May even younger in future Spider-Man?). And besides, the percentage could even be lower than the 20% announced by Geena Davis. In any case, we remember that in a study on French cinema, only 8% of the roles had been attributed to women over 50 during the year 2015 (and only 6% in 2016).
However, it is possible to remain hopeful. The year 2021 saw an excellent vintage of mature actors being recognized at the Oscars . Thus, Frances McDormand and Youn Yuh-Jung managed to obtain the respective awards for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress at the age of 63 and 73.