Nicole Kidman has taken aim at sexism in Hollywood, claiming the film industry does not represent an “even playing field” for women.
Speaking at the Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards in Los Angeles, the Oscar-winning Australian actor praised the organisation for its pioneering work supporting female actors and film-makers.
“Obviously we need to create more opportunities; it’s not an even playing field,” said Kidman, who picked up the Crystal award for excellence in film at the ceremony. “We’re all working and banding together and trying to change that and that’s what’s needed. We also need to put cameras in little girls’ hands and get them to tell stories and increase their confidence so that they can feel powerful.”
Ava DuVernay, whose Martin Luther King biopic Selma won plaudits from critics earlier this year, said talented women were often overlooked by the film industry.
“Hollywood is like the boyfriend who doesn’t call you as often, that’s kind of like what Hollywood is to women film-makers,” said DuVernay, who received the Dorothy Arzner directors award. “[There is] a little a bit of neglect in terms of recognising the imagination and talent women film-makers have ... of older actresses who might be past the window of when the industry says they’re valuable. There’s so much of that going on so it’s certainly something we all have to work to correct.”
Elsewhere, Avatar star Zoe Saldana described her disgust at being written off by some Hollywood producers after she became pregnant last year, and called for studios to provide childcare for mothers.
“Let me tell you something: it will never be the right time for anybody in your life that you get pregnant,” she told USA Today at the premiere of comic drama Infinitely Polar Bear. “The productions I was slated to work on sort of had a panic. I heard through the grapevine there was even a conversation of me being written off of one of the projects.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, are you kidding me? It’s this bad?’ Right when I just feel super-duper happy, is that inconvenient for you? That me, as a woman in my 30s, I finally am in love and I am finally starting my life? And it’s [screwing] your schedule up? Really?”
Saldana said she had to fight hard to have child care for her six-month twin sons Cy and Bowie included in film deals, and contrasted studios’ attitude towards mothers with their approach to male stars.
“They spend more money sometimes ‘perking’ up male superstars in a movie,” she said, citing private jets, assistants and bodyguards as well as “a really phat penthouse or them staying in a yacht instead of them staying on land” as typical incentives.
“But then a woman comes in going, ‘OK, I have a child. You’re taking me away from my home. You’re taking my children away from their home. And you’re going to make me work a lot more hours than I usually would if I was home. Therefore, I would have to pay for this nanny for more hours – so I kind of need that.’ And they go: ‘Nope, we don’t pay for nannies.’”
