Cate Blanchett thinks it’s “hard” to get paid as an actress.
Cate Blanchett thinks it’s ‘hard’ to get paid as an actress
The ‘Tár’ double-Oscar winner, 54, said she gets frustrated money discussions on film projects are not as “transparent” as other aspects of the production process.
She hit out at her Kering Women in Motion talk at the Cannes Film Festival alongside her producing partner, Coco Francini, saying: “It’s hard to get paid as an actress… we’re open about all the other aspects of the process (except money)… I think the more transparent all that stuff, the more you can work out how the money is flowing and where it needs to flow and where it’s not flowing yet.”
Mum-of-four Cate, who has three sons and a daughter with her producer husband Andrew Upton, 57, added about being shocked at the lack of women on sets: “We’ve both had experiences where we walked on set and done the headcount and you wonder why you sort of slightly feel alienated and annoyed some days.
“I realise that I’m the only woman in the cast… there are 62 men, and yep, I’m the only woman. This ratio is bad… it’s really disproportionate.
“And it means you’re always laughing at the same jokes. I do have a really good sense of humour, but it’s like, let’s change it up.”
The actress, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2004 for her role in Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Aviator’ and took home a Best Actress Oscar for playing a stressed socialite in Woody Allen’s 2013 film ‘Blue Jasmine’, added: “I look forward to the day where we don’t even need to have interviews about women in cinema.”
Cate and Coco reportedly have a rule of interviewing women and people “of colour” for the film projects they produce.
The pair are partners at Dirty Films, the production company formed by Cate and husband Andrew, and Variety reports they were inspired to put the diversity mandate in place after hiring mainly female directors and crew for the Hulu drama ‘Mrs America’ they executive produced.
Variety said on that set, they decided their mandate moving forward for all of their projects would be: “You must interview a woman and you must interview a person of color.”
Coco said at the Cannes chat even with progress for women in the entertainment business, it’s still “undoubtedly” harder for a woman to get a film financed.
She added: “We’re not there yet. We make films for an audience. We’d love for our industry to look like our audience, and we’re not there yet, but I think we are making progress.”
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