Maggie Gyllenhaal has exposed yet more sexist casting practices, revealing that she was recently turned down for a role because, at 37, she was considered “too old” to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. “It was astonishing to me,” she told The Wrap, adding that, “It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh.” It is laughable, for sure, but it definitely isn’t funny. Gyllenhaal added that, “There are things that are really disappointing about being an actress in Hollywood that surprise me all the time.”
Gyllenhaal adds her voice to those of a growing number of women in the film industry who have recently been calling out sexist casting practices and the paucity of interesting, intelligent scripts for women. Carey Mulligan recently condemned the practice of casting male roles first, and then picking women to fit those men, and Kristen Stewart said, “women inevitably have to work a little bit harder to be heard,” concluding that, “Hollywood is disgustingly sexist. It’s crazy. It’s so offensive it’s crazy.” There has also been anger this week at the apparently unspoken rule that women attending screenings at Cannes must wear high heels on the red carpet, or face being “actually physically pushed off,” surely marking the point when movie industry misogynists achieved a truly cartoonish villainy.
Credits
Photography Bayerberg