Los Angeles, May 17 (IANS) Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett, who recently attended the ongoing edition of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, feels that the #MeToo movement deserves more incubation time. The actress joined moderator Didier Allouch for a talk at the 2026 edition of the film festival and lamented how the #MeToo movement “got killed very quickly”.
The two time Oscar-winning actress notably served as Cannes jury president in 2018 at the height of #MeToo and led a women’s march where she held hands with Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux, Ava DuVernay, Agnes Varda and more as they walked up the steps of the Palais des Festivals, reports ‘Variety’
The actress said, “There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me, and the so-called average woman on the street is saying #MeToo. Why does that get shut down? What (the movement) revealed is a systemic layer of abuse, not only in this industry but in all industries, and if you don’t identify a problem, you can’t solve the problem”.
As per ‘Variety’, the actress noted that the imbalance of power between men and women in the film industry continues to this day.
She further mentioned, “I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day, and it is still, you know… there’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning. I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same. You just have to brace yourself slightly, and I’m used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace. I think it has an effect on the work”.
Julianne Moore also spoke up at Cannes about the gender disparity that continues on film sets. During her Kering Women in Motion Talk, the ‘Still Alice’ Oscar-winning actress said that “I can remember being on a set not too long ago where the only women were me and the third AC”.
“It’s when Hillary Clinton lost the election, and we were both devastated. And I said, ‘Look around the room. We’re the only ones here,’” Moore added. “I’ve certainly seen more gender representation in crews. It was unusual when I was coming up to see women on a crew”, she added.
–IANS
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