Navigating perilous waters
Hawn, Schumer agree women don’t fare much better a generation later
Actresses say Hollywood is still a tough town for women
SANTA MONICA, CALIF. It’s been 15 years since Goldie Hawn made a film (2002’s The Banger Sisters) and almost 40 years since she produced Private Benjamin.
The comedy queen has seen it all, from the view from the Oscar stage (she won best supporting actress for 1969’s Cactus Flower) to how she was sidelined by becoming her own brand.
As a producer/actress in the 1980s, “I felt marginalized in a way,” says Hawn, sitting next to a new comedy brand known as Amy Schumer, her co-star in
Snatched. “Because I was looked at as wanting to do my own stuff, being a controlling person, not being easy to work with — things that weren’t true.”
The question of our time is: Is it getting any better for women in Hollywood?
Not really, says Hawn, referencing daughter Kate Hudson as a case in point. “My daughter is a great singer and a dancer; Katie is so deeply talented she can do anything. But she won in the rom-com world.” Then, in the early aughts, “you know, romcoms died.”
And so, Hawn infers, did other film opportunities. Hawn, 71, has since watched Hudson and her contemporaries diversify. “These girls are going on to make businesses — they’re making a fortune,” she says. “Look at what Gwyneth (Paltrow) did (with Goop) and what Katie’s doing (with Fabletics). It’s definitely an option to get into business. The business itself, I don’t think has changed that much.”
Schumer, 35, a vocal advocate for positive body images, notoriously was asked to lose weight for her 2015 breakout Trainwreck. But with success comes new boundaries. Since then, “no one has asked me that and I don’t feel any pressure,” she says.
“But you want to see yourself on screen and feel like you look great,” Schumer says. “I love how we both look in this movie. It’s not that I’m eating burritos at 2 a.m. — I mean, sometimes,” she cracks.
Today she’s healthy, happy — and wildly successful. “What’s cool is that people show up and people buy tickets and that’s where the proof is,” Schumer adds. “I feel really lucky because I’m like, ‘Oh, I can have both. Like, I’m not hungry, and I feel good and I can work.’ ”
The road for actresses can be fraught as they try to maneuver from being “a young gamine type” to a woman in film, Hawn says. “You can’t be crazy and ditzy your whole life, the way people see you,” she says.
Hawn calls the transition of a public image “delicate,” recalling how “some directors didn’t want to work with me because of my name, ‘Goldie’ — they didn’t want to necessarily attach themselves to an image.”
“Whatever is your gift can also be your downfall,” she says. “And you’ve got to be skillful as to how you navigate your choices and your life and all the things you’re doing around your career.”