"Women in Hollywood" panelists discuss lack of good film roles for women

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Control your words and control your paper(contracts and money). If more  womyn pulled together and work delligently and nice then womyn in hollywood would have more opportunities as a community (no matter what gender attraction you have)  to make more good and solid roles for womyn happen. It's time to be the driver not the pasenger, those joyride days are over. Create your own journey.

A part of the problem, and one that rarely gets discussed is the lack of interest in creating good roles for women by the women who are in power in Hollywood. Over the years women from Jane Fonda, to Goldie Hawn, to Drew Barrymore have all had very sucessful production companies and yet, these women rarely produce movies that aren't star vehicles for themselves.

Jodie Foster is a case in point; she keeps getting loads of awards for being a "strong woman in Hollywood" but she has yet to use that muscle to find, nuture and complete a movie that isn't a vehicle for herself. Which is her choice but when you multiply that by all the other women who make the same choice then you get the situation where both women and men are not creating much mainstream film content with viable female characters.

Women like Rita Wilson are the exceptions to that; she got the rights to, and produced, Mamma Mia not as a vehicle for herself and look at what's happened. So it can be done.

Kate Mulgrew be still my heart!!

and frankly as an aspiring actress it's things like this that frighten me. If amazing women like these cant get rolls then what hope is there for the rest of us...not that i'm an older woman, but i will be some day.

The lack of roles for older women seems like a very Hollywood problem to me. 

These days I couldn't honestly care less about Hollywood.  All the filmmakers there seem to care about is how things look and how much money it will make. It's not art any longer, it's mass production. They're not interested in hiring talented actresses, they just want eye candy.

In the UK, for instance, it doesn't seem to be that big a problem.  Take Judy Dench, Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith for instance. 

Another good example is Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith in the 70s on the long-running British sci-fi series Doctor Who. A few years back she was given a chance to reprise her role on screen again only to shortly afterwards find herself playing the main lead in a new spin-off series (The Sarah Jane Adventures). On top of everything, she manages to make 60 look young.

Another funny example from the UK would be Eve Myles' guest appearence on the new fantasy series Merlin. Myles is about 30, but on Merlin they used extensive make-up to make her look really, really old. I've seen pictures of her in that role, and I didn't recognise her. 

The bottom line is, if they take a young actress and go to all that trouble to make her look old then clearly they haven't hired her because she just happens to be young and good-looking, now have they?

Cherry / Torchwood_Operative

Everyone should have the right to say "yes", and the right to say "no". Marriage should be based on love and relationships that work, not tradition<