Before Emily Browning there was Amanda Seyfried, Kristen Stewart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan, Anna Kendrick, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jessica Chastain and Patricia Arquette. What will it take for the big dogs of Hollywood to wake up and smell the sexism?
So far Emily has chosen her roles well, playing the bad-ass, doe-eyed, manga-like Babydoll in Sucker Punch, the troubled Eve in God Help The Girl, and now Reggie Kray’s wife, Frances Shea, in the Kray twins biopic Legend. But those aren’t always the roles offered to her. In an interview with the Guardian, Emily says, “I’m so determined not to play the hot babe that doesn’t say anything, that can’t have an opinion, but it’s so difficult to resist all of that. Hollywood movies are made for white men, and that’s something I think about and which bothers me all the time… The sad thing is it’s so consistent, and so present. Sometimes you don’t even notice it.”
It’s a world she saw a snippet of at age 14, when she moved to Los Angeles for nine months to film Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. “I saw a world I didn’t want to be part of,” she told the Guardian. “I was hanging out with kids who had never been to school, who only knew the film industry, and it freaked me out. I had certain people who were telling me, if I was lucky, I could be the star of a Nickelodeon show. I thought, ‘No, I can’t do this. I need to get out of here.’ And for a while, I thought I didn’t want to be an actress.”
How many more actresses need to speak out before the movie industry misogynists will get back in their holes?
Credits
Photography Matteo Montanari
Styling Tracey Nicholson