SPEAKING THEIR MINDS, IN ROLES AND IN REAL LIFE
Alot of controversy has been swirling around Hollywood these days, so we invited six leading actresses to join The Envelope to share their insights. Answering our call was Annette Bening, who plays former Hollywood leading lady Gloria Grahame romantically linked to a much younger man in her final years in “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”; Jessica Chastain, who plays real-life poker entrepreneur Molly Bloom targeted by the FBI in “Molly’s Game”; Diane Kruger, who won the Cannes film festival’s top acting prize for her portrayal of a woman whose husband and child have been killed by terrorists in “In the Fade”; Margot Robbie, who stars as disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding in the quirky “I, Tonya”; Saoirse Ronan, as a Sacramento teen looking for her place in the world in “Lady Bird”; and Kate Winslet, who stars in Woody Allen’s 1950s Coney Island drama “Wonder Wheel.” ¶ With ages ranging from 23 to 59, the women talked with Times film writers Mark Olsen and Amy Kaufman about looking good versus feeling good, the treatment of women on screen, learning from film roles and finding confidence. Oh, and how the Kardashians helped in prepping for a role. ¶ Here’s an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Amy Kaufman: Jessica, at Cannes you made a remark after being a part of the jury there about some of the things you had seen reflected in the films. Can you talk about what you saw?
Chastain:
Yeah, I had never seen 21 films in such a short amount of time, one after the other. And one of the things that I wouldn’t have noticed on its own, but when watching in that concentration became very clear to me was how the world viewed women. And how little stories talked from a woman’s point of view, from a female protagonist, a story about a woman who wasn’t victimized.
Mark Olsen: Annette, you play the actress Gloria Graham and part of what the movie is about is the way that Hollywood treats actresses. Was that one of the things you were interested in portraying?
Annette Benning:
I didn’t have a lot of real detail about what actually happened to Gloria. But what’s fascinating is you watch women in that period and especially in her case, she was often playing the bad girl, was how often she got slapped, hit and beat up in the movies. And at that point it wasn’t even a comment. That was just an accepted thing that happened. I think there’s a theme, I was at the Venice Film Festival on the jury this year also watching films from all over the world and the number of movies that had to do with emotional, sexual and physical violence towards women — and if the story wasn’t about that, then it was tangentially part of the mix of the narrative.
Kaufman: Jessica, you’ve always been very vocal on social media. Do you feel like, and this is for all of you, do you feel the freedom to be open about your opinions, about the industry?
Chastain:
I’m open with my opinions