While #MeToo and #TimesUp are handy bookmarks of sorts to follow these ongoing movements, the conversations are complex. The issues of sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood (and other industries) are grown from a larger culture where women’s voices and stories simply aren’t heard. The movie business has long been plagued with the problem of creating quality leading roles for women, and it’s something that’s far from being solved in a meaningful way. If you want to maintain a working career as an actress, it might sometimes means taking on roles that are underwritten or filled with stock clichés. For Keira Knightley, she has discovered that making period pieces — of which “Pride & Prejudice,” “Atonement,” and “Anna Karenina” are just a few — allows her to find more fulfilling characters to portray.
In an extensive profile in Variety, the actress is very candid about the state of roles for women in contemporary set productions.
“With the rise of Netflix and Amazon we’re seeing some strong female characters and female stories on streaming services. I don’t know about films as much. I don’t really do films set in the modern day because the female characters nearly always get raped,” Knightley said. “I always find something distasteful in the way women are portrayed, whereas I’ve always found very inspiring characters offered to me in historical pieces. There’s been some improvement. I’m suddenly being sent scripts with present-day women who aren’t raped in the first five pages and aren’t simply there to be the loving girlfriend or wife.”
It’s a bracing statement from the actress, who perhaps might be speaking with a bit of hyperbole, but it’s not an exaggeration that rape and sexual assault are often used rather carelessly as plot devices across many films and TV shows. But again, as Knightley points out, Hollywood is resistant to quality pictures with complex female characters. As she notes, her upcoming Sundance film “Colette” about the famed French author took over a decade to get made.
“[Director] Wash [Westmoreland], the director, and his late partner [the writer and director Richard Glatzer] were trying to get this movie made for about 15 years. I don’t think it’s a surprise that it managed to get funding in the last few years when it had never managed to get funding before. Women’s stories are suddenly viewed as important,” she said.
These are very strong words from Knightley, but important as well, because it’s a reminder that Hollywood has a long, long way to go to balance the scales after decades of inequity. She adds that she’s never been sexually harassed or assaulted on a film set, nor faced any untoward behavior from Harvey Weinstein. But she plainly explains why more women in all aspects of production will be a cultural boon.
“There are quite a few scripts written by women; it’s the directors that have been massively lacking. I’ve worked with a number of female filmmakers, and they’ve all been wonderful. They haven’t always found it easy to get another film off the ground even when the films we’ve done have been very well reviewed. It’s a big problem. When there are female writers and directors and producers, the parts for women are better, and so the way that society views women through drama is much better and much more well rounded,” Knightley said.
“Colette” debuts at Sundance on Saturday, January 20th.