Jessica Lange has always worked steadily in Hollywood, but her career hit an undeniable lull about a decade ago. She recently returned to acclaim and audience favor with the lead role in American Horror Story. For four seasons, she’s dominated the show. Jessica, age 66, has decades of experience with the male-dominated entertainment industry. She’s experienced many highs (2 best actress Oscar wins) and lows. She’s seen and heard everything during her years in the biz. So Jessica wasn’t at all surprised to hear 37-year-old Maggie Gyllenhaal’s story about being too old to play a 55-year-old man’s wife. Jessica spoke with The Wrap and told some straight-up truths about how Hollywood works:
On Hollywood sexism: “Hollywood is run with this male point of view. Even if a woman runs a studio, she still does it with a male point of view. And as long as that exists, you’re still going to have this wish fulfillment. That men continue to be fascinating and attractive and virile, and women age and are no longer sexual or beautiful — it’s a fantasy that has nothing to do with reality.”
She’s not surprised by the Maggie Gyllenhaal story: “When I was in my thirties I wasn’t fascinated by 70-year-old men. But then, I didn’t have to be. It’s classic Hollywood. I’m glad the media has picked up on it, but it’s certainly not a new phenomenon. I think a lot of it is fear of mortality. One’s mortality, one’s youth and virility … now they have Viagra, they’re humping away on their deathbeds. Hollywood is a perfect expansion of that idea that permeates our society.”
[From The Wrap]
The stuff Jessica says about female studio heads running things with a male POV is interesting. Last week, Amy Poehler revealed how she “often looks to men to model behavior” during important meetings. She does so, in part, to counteract how men treat her in the boardroom. That sucks in a way. Yet Amy’s killing it so hard that you can’t help but feel she’s pulling one over on the men. She’s playing their game, and she’s winning. Whereas Jessica Lange is pretty much over everything and refuses to play any game. They’re both awesome and winning in their own ways.
Photos courtesy of WENN
I agree with her. Hollywood certainly does not help but I think it’s part of a much bigger issue, society at its core has been mostly unkind to women. We have to be good girls, learn how to cook healthy meals, marry nice boys, have adorable babies, be loving wives, raise respectful children, have careers, climb our ways to the top, fight for our rights, fight for our decisions and choices, wear heels, flats, worry about our hair, skin, weight, race, ethnicity, in the midst of criticism while we’re being watched, surveyed, measured by men and other women.
Perhaps if women would stop watching sexist, ageist, violent, degrading movies and TV shows the tide would turn. We have incredible power individually and collectively.
We are the first teachers of the next generation – we set the tone of what is proper/acceptable in our homes, even with our husbands and boyfriends.
As a mere teenager, when I was in the room, all TV shows with violence against women were banned at MY insistence. What people, ie, family/BFs did on their own was their business but I knew I had an impact. Some people, even my BFs, began to think differently about what they were watching. It made them CONSCIOUS.
We have that much power ladies!!
im curious. did you also ban tv shows with violence against men and children?
Yes.
No violence at all. I would except a brief battle scene if it was a “war” movie. But the movie or show could not be about the violence, per se, but rather the men’s relationships and there personal struggles in such an environment.
Absolutely no overt scenes of violence against women or children. Such story lines had to be implied, never shown.
+100
She has a great point. It seems like in a lot of these male dominated areas, women who act like chauvinists succeed. Women who can ‘be one of the boys’ have greater value because they still value men over women.
It doubly sucks that someone as talented and smart as Poehler has to play that game.
Here’s to hoping that this is the beginning of a sea change and not another set of hoops we have to jump through to prove women are worthy.
Love Jessica Lange. Her character was my favorite in all four seasons of AHS and I will miss her dearly in season 5 (in fact I probably wouldn’t even watch it if Matt Bomer wasn’t in it).
She was amazing in AHS. Such a pretty and talented woman.
I truly do not like the show’s terrible writing after season 1, but the actors, female and male, kept me watching. Ms Lange was amazing on there – so versatile and she made dreadful dialogue sing.
The show is weird but the acting is great.
Also Dylan McDermott is so hot!
Then don’t watch Freak Show. That storyline was horrible. I hatewatched it being a fan of previous seasons.
The great thing for AHS and Ryan Murphy is each season is new. New everything. And it can be light or dark or comedic.
Hotel has the makings to be beyond amazing! Now, what they take to use and what they try to cram in will decide what this is as a season.
Kathryn Bigelow springs to mind.
How about Amy Pascal ?
Especially her emails with Rudin.
Dished liked a catty man.
This is a conversation that applies across the board no matter the industry.
Other industries have attempted to address it according to their particular needs, but Hollywood isn’t addressing this.
There are a number of problems here, such as the lack of good scripts that are female centric, audiences don’t seem to support the few female centric films that make it, and so the few women (and men) at the top can’t make a case for female centric films to their shareholders/financiers.
Those are actually misconceptions that Bridesmaids, Frozen, Pitch Perfect, Pitch Perfect 2, The Heat, Salt, Lucy, and a million other have female centric films continue to disprove. Studio heads keep pretending that female centric films and films with female leads can’t bring in audiences but it just isn’t true. Films like It’s Complicated and Mamma Mia show we also want to see older women find love (if they’re Meryl Streep at least) also.
Goddess
Yes! I love her honesty; the things she says, the lack of chemicals in her face, and her ability to drive away from the bs.
I wish she hadn’t butchered her face with surgery though. It took several years for some semblance of her old face to return.
She’s in the gallery of top 10 botched faces gallery. She should have gone to Jane Fonda’s surgeon. There is a good face lift.
we grow up learning history which was written by men with men’s point of view, men’s perspective to begin with.
like, sometimes, i think discussing sexism with men is pointless because they grow up thinking they are the default human beings.
Indeed, the problem starts long before the boys (and girls) reach adulthood.
I think modelling men’s behaviour is different from running a studio with a male point of view. I think the former probably helps to get your ideas heard (i.e. be more assertive?). The latter is actually taking on a preconceived mindset for how stories should be told and throwing money at it.
She pretty much said it all except that I’d also have added Hollywood is run with a straight white male point of view.
I’m sure her statement is soothing some MRA tears since they are still butthurt over Furiosa, The Movie.
who is the woman in the photo with her?
Actress Sarah Poulson.
Not familiar with her, but thanks LAK!!
I love watching her, she’s beautiful, talented and elegant. Plus, she’s older, and I wish people had more interest in old people’s leadership in films.
and yet women – I assume you are mostly women here but maybe not – here constantly deride women’s faces when they try to stay young looking so they can be employed in a vicious industry. . Or constantly attack certain women who are building businesses that employ other women. Or rave about a TV show that constantly shows women being raped (spare me the faux history lessons about the middle ages).
So when money is concerned, some women are very willing to betray other women.
I am not saying this to attack, but to point out that this anti-woman attitude is not solely in Hollywood and it would be great for all of us to be aware of the “isms” we all have.
+100000 – I am a female in my twenties and while it’s great to see all the women in this comments section supporting other women…..so much sexism I witness, so much criticism of looks and career and motherhood and wifehood….comes FROM other women. Women bemoan men and their sexist judgment but I see tons of women judging others, ESPECIALLY for their looks and youth. It’s a two way street.
Often, the whole point of this website seems to be to encourage women to criticize other women. Sorry, had to say it.
Yeah, because women don’t have brains and opinions, are incapable of higher cognitive functioning/logic, and any critique is due to their gender and inclination to cattiness, especially about other women. RME
I WEEP for women who butcher their faces. I’m not going to be supportive of it nor any way women have to twist themselves inside out for approval and to get ahead.
I think people (not just women) get derided for plastic surgery when the work turns out badly.
When someone as extremely beautiful as Nicole Kidman goes and gets work done on her face and she turns out less-goodlooking than how truly good-looking she was previously, people are going to notice.
Gwyneth Paltrow gets criticized by everyone, both male and female, because she really is that annoying when shilling a product for her business. And anyone who becomes a salesperson of some kind will have to face criticism because you’re asking people to pay money for stuff. Dr. Oz has gotten criticized for doing that, and he’s male.
Also, regarding the plastic surgery issue — usually actors will bring up a claim of being 100 percent natural, and that’s when people might notice the potential inaccuracy of the statement. The actors tend to unwittingly open up the issue. There are some actresses I might suspect of doing something, but if they don’t bring it up for discussion, there isn’t really an opening for me or anyone else to remark on it.
I think this is true everywhere, except that in the normal workplace, I’ve noticed that male employees get away with a lot more in terms of just being childish, whiny, covering insecurities with stupid jokes. No point in women trying to emulate that, we won’t get away with it.
Plus that make more money for acting like children all while doing the same job as a woman.
The movies that have strong female characters in the story line need to come out in droves to support. If we don’t, more won’t get made. Box office talks, and that’s the bottom line.
Philomena, Judi Dench, great movie.
Notes on a Scandal, Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, amazing movie.
My policy is that I don’t go see/rent movies that star young actress/ much older male love interest. I also don’t subsidize movies that star several old men and one boring, young actress.
Most women aren’t sexually interested in older men, I know that I was repulsed by old creepers hitting on me. Hollywood needs to stop stuffing this self-serving fantasy down our throat. No one but men buys this crap. While we’re at it: stop it with the fat unattractive guy and the hot wife.
Amen!
I’m with you. Boycotting all movies that promote this ridiculous, self-serving fantasy. Maggie Gyllenhaal in her 30s was considered to old for an actor in his 50s? Enough is enough.
I started to pay more attention to actor’s ages lately and came to the conclusion that avoiding such movies is harder than I thought. It’s easy to avoid that Will Smith/Margot Robbie movie and others based on similar pairings, but sometimes even the most innocent movies, no one would suspect of having this issue, are on the offender’s lists. For example – I recently watched Paddington, a kid’s movie, with my nephew and the parents were played by 50-something Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins, who is in her late 30’s. From the story and the flashbacks shown, there was absolutely no reason for the parents to have a +10 age difference. It would actually be more believable if they both were in their late 30’s, early 40’s since they were shown as wild kids, who turned responsible the minute their children arrived. At this point it just seems like a compulsion or a Pavlovian response to cast younger actresses without any valid reason in those casting directors and studio executives’ minds. I hope those discussions and public scrutiny will influence some change.
Ive pretty much been doing this my entire adult movie ticket buying life. If the white power wangs actually knew how many hundreds of potential millions had fallen through their fingers like water through a sieve they’d never sleep at night………
Also this. Salma Hayek speaking at the Women in Motion talks presented by THR at the 2015 Canne Film Festival……..
“The movie industry is in trouble because we don’t care about their movies, and they’re trying to figure out why,” Salma Hayek said. “What would happen if there was an open door, and somebody started doing movies that we want to see? … [The studio executives] think, ‘Chick flicks, romantic comedies. Guess what? We’re smarter than that.”
I love her quotes! She’s right about female studio heads because they usually make it where they are by making very safe choices. Catering to women is considered risky, so they make the same decisions the male studio heads make.
I am no longer seeing movies that feature older men and actresses who are decades younger. I am sick of studios spreading this idea that women are only valuable and sexual when they are in their 20s and early 30s while men can age into their 50s and 60s and still get the same roles and get paired with women old enough to be their daughter.
Gender doesn’t predetermine behaviour. If a woman makes sexist casting choices it’s because SHE is sexist, not because she’s “running her business like a man”.
Gender DOES predetermine behavior. The whole world caters to straight men. If you want to succeed, you have to pander to men and their interests. Bros before hos and all that.
I’ve never catered to or pandered to a straight man in my life, have you?
This isn’t about gender though. It’s about career survival.
“Even if a woman runs a studio she still does it with a male point of view” was the quote from Ms Lange. MY point was (supposed to be) that the woman running said studio with a “male’s point of view” isn’t doing it with a man’s point of view, but a sexist, woman’s point of view.
I get your point, Chelsea, that it’s not about gender. I agree, it’s not someone’s gender influencing someone’s point of view, it’s their own sexist point of view. It’s not attributable to men at all, in this specific example, but to women who run studios having their own sexist point of view.
Sorry, but like so many actors she doesn’t have a clue how real world businesses are run. It isn’t about pink or blue..it’s about green.