Hollywood pressures women to be thin, alleges Thompson
Actresses who are into their 30s simply don’t eat. There was a wonderful actress I was working with on Brideshead Revisited, and the producers said, ‘Will you lose some weight?’ “And 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.’ It’s evil what’s going on out there and it’s getting worse.
LOS ANGELES: Actress Emma Thompson has alleged that Hollywood pressures female actors to be thin. Thompson said that she almost quit Brideshead Revisited because another actor was asked by the fi lm’s producers to lose weight. Thompson made the comment during an interview on Swedish talk show Skavlan, after another guest brought up the subject of weight loss. Thompson didn’t reveal the name of the actor, but confi rmed that she confronted producers of the fi lm over the issue. “Actresses who are into their 30s simply don’t eat,” she said. “There was a wonderful actress I was working with on Brideshead Revisited, and the producers said, ‘Will you lose some weight?’ “And I said to them, ‘ If you speak to her about this again on any
Emma Thompson, actress
level, I will leave this picture. You are never to do that.’ It’s evil what’s going on out there and it’s getting worse,” she added.
Brideshead Revisited, a fi lm adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel of the same name, was released in 2008 and starred Thompson, Ben Whishaw and Hayley Atwell. Other female actors in the fi lm included Felicity Jones and Greta Scacchi.
In the interview, Thompson also joked that Hollywood’s obsession over weight prevented her from living there. “I never moved to the US,” she said. “I couldn’t. Can you imagine? Every time I go to LA I think, ‘Oh God, I am too fat to go there.’”