Elle Magazine has released the covers and some pull quotes from their annual Women in TV issue, which features covers of Olivia Wilde and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, among others. Kaiser will be covering the other ladies separately, who are Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis and Priyanka Chopra. They have a nice balance with women of color, which seems to represent television much more so than film. Julia Louis Dreyfus realizes that film has an issue with their portrayal of women in general, and she told Elle that television doesn’t seem to suffer from a lack of women in lead roles. Louis-Dreyfus is of course on Veep, which has won her four Golden Globes, one in a year up until this year when she lost to newcomer Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend).
Go to the movies—how many good scripts are you really seeing out there? How many good, meaty roles are there for women within those scripts? Not tons of them. Right now there are so many [TV] shows on with strong, complicated, powerful, not-so-powerful, interesting human beings who are women. And I am thrilled to be playing one of them.
[Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Elle]
While producers and decision makers claim the numbers are dictating the films that get made the truth is that old white men, and men in general, are making the decisions. We saw this play out in action during the filmmaking competition Project Greenlight.
Elle is also featuring Olivia Wilde, and their pull quote from her is a bit more self-focused. Wilde talks about her rise to stardom and how she has seen both sides of fame. I would be interested in reading more of her interview because it’s hard to tell what she means exactly as this is taken out of context.
One day all these people were bowing down to me and throwing free clothes at me and telling me I was the best thing since sliced bread, and the next day…all of that disappeared. That was great for an 18-year-old to learn, and I will never again take the BS seriously.
[Olivia Wilde in Elle]
At least she knows she got caught up in fame. Wilde is about to star on the upcoming HBO series, Vinyl, which comes out in February and is executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger. You can see a trailer here and it also stars Bobby Cannavale and Ray Romano. It looks like it’s about the excesses of the music industry in the late 70s/early 80s. I’ll definitely check it out.
As for the editorials, I like the styling and fashion on Wilde, but they cut off the top of her head on both the cover and internal photo. Louis Dreyfus looks bizarre with that wet hair, that’s also a pet peeve of mine. I don’t mean to sound so negative but there’s nothing striking about either of these shoots or the styling despite the lovely subjects.
Photos credit: David Bellemere for Elle and FameFlynet
I just can’t with Olivia Wilde. She’s such a bad actress — I was interested in that new HBO show until I saw she’s in it — and she seems like she’s got her head up her a$$. I just don’t get it.
ETA: And I agree they made JLD look like hell. She generally looks fantastic, but the styling for this shoot is just awful.
absolutely this!! Your Star Tanked cause you were good for a sexy quote and Not much else, My Bf Jokes I call her box office poison cause as soon as I know she is gonna be on something, I tell him LOL watch it Tank!! ( that said for Bobby Cannavale and Until the Baz Luhrmann show comes on Netflix, I hope the new HBO show does well)
She just got righteous now cause her new schtick is “Mother Earth If You’re Too Young To Like Jennifer Garner”
JLD is right about lack of good roles. At first I thought, well she’s had great roles — but then I realized, her roles have been great because she MADE them great. They could be awful.
Can you imagine Elaine Benes played by Katharine Heigl? Or Olivia Wilde? Or anyone?
Or Veep with anyone else? It could be strident and off-putting.
JLD manages to be vivid and unique, yet mesh in a quirky ensemble. To be funny and crazy yet still a sexy, real woman.
Hard to do.
Sorry but that is BS. Have you seen Meadowland? She delivered one of the best performances of last year in that film. She is actually a mightly underrated actress talentwise. I recommend all of you to read this, before you start judge her and acting abilities.
http://www.laineygossip.com/Olivia-Wilde-in-Meadowland-movie-review/41325
Not to mention Drinking Buddies, where she is also fantastic. And I could easily name a few more titles, where she is actualy quite good.
I don’t know why my response to you got deleted, but I’ll try again: I *have* seen The Words, The Next Three Days and Cowboys & Aliens and she was awful in all three. I don’t need to read something that tries to convince me she’s a good actress when I can clearly see for myself that she’s not.
Amd nobody can impove himself/herself through the years, right? I saw all three too, she was okay in all three. Again watch Meadowland (or Drinking Buddies) and they say she is shitty.
Ok, Olivia … I mean, BJ.
It sounds like Olivia Wilde might be talking about when she married a prince at 18 and things changing when she divorced him.
That prince was basically HOMELESS (he said that in a interview not so long ago, and to be clear, it was not his fault) when they met, and they lived and married in a old schoolbus, because he had no money to own a house… Olivia had much more money when they met, then him. And I think that was the case during their relationship.
Yes he has ties to a rich family back in Italy, but back then he got very few support from them. And he is still not a wealthy person til this day. He is actually a very talented photographer, musican and filmmaker.
Olivia Wilde really became famous when she starred in the OC. She was a semi-regular. The actors from the OC were the biggest thing for a moment there, so i’m assuming that’s what she’s talking about vis a vis her fame at 18 and how it went to her head. See Mischa Barton as the extreme example of what Olivia is talking about.
ETA: she was also married to a prince at that point so I assume she had many obsequious people telling her she was wonderful based on her marriage – see Kate Middleton.
So nice that you split the articles between women of color and white women.Thanks for being so considerate.
Also I disagree,this is some of the best I’ve seen Viola Davis and Olivia Wilde look.And Priyanka is a godess and she looks good in everything.
I’m from India and actually Priyanka Chopra has had a lot of work done to her face to look the way she does now. Plus she wears a ton of makeup, contact lenses and stuff, but she is very successful and has a decent body of work in Bollywood. I’m happy for her that she is crossing-over ( if that’s possible).
I don’t know much about Olivia so I can’t really discern the meaning of what she’s saying but I like the photo of her in the metallic coat, beautiful.
And the wet hair really looks atrocious. It’s like they actively tried to make JLD look bad, which is no easy feat. Her eye makeup is bizarre, too.
I wish they hadn’t airbrushed JLD quite so much for the cover. There’s nothing wrong with wrinkles on a 50+ y.o.!
Alright this may be controversial but I kind of agree with what Cate Blanchett said a while ago. It seems like the question du jour to ask every single female celebrity, but rarely male celebrities, directors, and studio heads, about inequality in Hollywood. It’s become a talking point and there’s a lot of talk and no action from those who can change something.
Olivia Wilde looks fabulous and it is interesting to see that she snagged an HBO show. I honestly thought she was Megan Fox 2.0 for a while but an HBO gig is a prestigious and will probably lead her to more work.
That and Meadowland. I thought she is a good actress before seeing that movie. Since watching that film, I think she has the potential to be very good/great. If that performance was coming from a Cate Blanchett or a Kate Winslet, it would be easily nominated for all the major awards. But since it’s coming from Olivia and it’s a tiny, tiny indie film, not so many people even saw it… Those who did, almost all gave her major praises for that performance.
I think Olivia looks stunning, and I love JLD so this is for me. I wish I could buy this mag it seems to be interesting.
what I love about Olivia is that she is so self-aware and real in a nice way. I love her realness compared to JLaw, which I don’t really like because JLaw usually is borderline rude and obnoxious. Olivia isn’t.
And I disagree, her editorial, TO ME, is amazing. She looks amazing in the internal photo too.
Happy 55th birthday, Julia.
How many good roles are there for women in real life? How many women climb the ranks? How many senior or tenured profs? I’m an aerospace enggr so know about my area but this is a common complaint. A bit tired of Hollywood complaining if I’m honest – if there were more expansive roles for women in the movies, they’d be truly fiction 🙂
Not to say the status quo is acceptable – just that this is a domain-independent problem.
As superficial as Hollywood is, it has a lot of influence on society in general, specifically on changes in society.
Too many examples to give here, but i’ll stick to the most glaring recent one based upon your area of expertise ie science.
Much of sci-fi, in terms of everyday applications, has advanced in terms of people willing to put their money into research due to Hollywood beating that drum or popularising the idea.
Woman as leaders…..if Hollywood regularly casts them in that position, and not as arm candy – see Denise Richards as a ‘scientist’ in that Bond she was in – then it will influence society to see it as normal and perhaps some woman will be influenced to apply for higher positions.
Clearly, the real world examples of female leaders aren’t influential enough, so time for Hollywood to work it’s magic – see how it worked it’s magic for a black POTUS.
What may start out as fiction or an outlandish suggestion soon becomes reality.
I wish there were more movies like Enough Said, the one JLD did with James Gandolfini(what a sad loss). It was a human sized movie with believable characters and situations and great chemistry between its stars. I know those films are not big BO, but there’s a need for them to balance out all the CGI movies aimed at 14 yo boys of all ages and genders.
Currently, there are a few actors who will get me out of the house and into a theatre, but there are a LOT of actresses who will do that and the majority of their films are of the smaller, more thoughtful kind.
Oh I LOVED that movie, they were both so… GOOD on that.. Thoughtful is such a good way to describe the movie
Well there’s loads if you’re white.
JLD looks AMAZING. That is all.