Thompson saw body shaming on movie set

Emma Thompson, an Oscarwinning actor, screenwriter and former comedian, has always been outspoken when it comes to Hollywood’s double standards — especially when it comes to a woman’s body.

While guesting on the Swedish talk show Skavlan last week, Thompson revealed she once witnessed a producer on a movie she was filming encourage an actress to lose weight while shaming her body.

“There was a wonderful actress in a film I did called Brideshead Revisited,” Thompson said, referring to the 2008 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel co-starring Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, and Hayley Atwell. “The producer said to her, ‘Will you lose some weight?’ And she was absolutely exquisite!”

“I said to them, ‘If you speak to her about this again, on any level, I will leave this picture. You are never to do that,’” Thompson said. “It’s evil what’s happening and what’s going on there, and it’s getting worse. The French fashion industry said they would get rid of size zero and then, you know, they didn’t ... The anorexia — there’s so many kids, girls and boys now, and actresses who are very, very thin into their 30s, who simply don’t eat. They don’t eat ... Sometimes there are just some subjects that you absolutely have to make noise about because it’s so tedious and it’s gone on and on.”

She added that whenever she is asked about her weight, she responds, “Sorry, do you want me to be an actress or a model?”

This isn’t the first time Thompson has spoken up for a fellow actress when it comes to body image. Kate Winslet once famously said that, while on the set of Sense and Sensibility, Thompson became a mentor to her, at one point pulling her aside and telling her, “If you ever lose weight, I will never ... talk to you again.”

In an interview with The Radio Times in 2015, via Vanity Fair, Thompson explained why she is passionate about women and body image: “I get behind as many young female performers as I can and actually a lot of the conversations I have with them are about exactly the fact that we are facing and writing about the same things and nothing has changed, and that some forms of sexism and unpleasantness to women have become more entrenched and indeed more prevalent. When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world, and when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women. And I find that very disturbing and sad.”

PRODUCER SAID TO HER, ‘WILL YOU LOSE SOME WEIGHT?’