“There are huge differences in the way male and female actors are perceived. Women have to be a certain size, in order to get good roles. The only successful, larger-than-average female actor I can think of is Kathy Bates. And once women reach a certain age, they can only expect one or two good roles per year, whereas male actors can continue working regularly well into their forties. Then there are the types of roles available to women. We're constantly depicted as sidekicks, ingenues, and hangers-on, rarely as independent and capable individuals. And the enormous, huge discrepancies in pay…. the amounts that some male actors make are astronomically obscene. Women in Hollywood are constantly shown that there's a difference between them and men, and that that's okay. But it's not okay.”

— Gillian Anderson

On inequality in Hollywood — reported in Lynne Melcombe, BC Woman "Supernatural SuXXess" http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/94_95/95bcwoman.shtml (October, 1995)
1990s

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Gillian Anderson 49

American-British film, television and theatre actress, acti… 1968

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“Nothing indicts female allegiance to patriarchy more than the willingness to behave as though the problems created by cultural investment in sexist thinking about the nature of male and female roles can be solved by women's working harder.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love

“Actors always have to fight for the good parts. There are so few good roles written for women each year, and when one is written like this every actress in town covets the role.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

On her role in the film Things We Lost In The Fire — Western Mail staff (February 1, 2008) "From the grave to the cradle", Western Mail.

“One feature of our own society that seems decidedly anomalous is the matter of sexual advertisement. As we have seen, it is strongly to be expected on evolutionary grounds that, where the sexes differ, it should be the males that advertise and the females that are drab. Modern western man is undoubtedly exceptional in this respect. It is of course true that some men dress flamboyantly and some women dress drably but, on average, there can be no doubt that in our society the equivalent of the peacock’s tail is exhibited by the female, not by the male. Women paint their faces and glue on false eyelashes. Apart from special cases, like actors, men do not.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 9. Battle of the Sexes

“Actresses can only play women. I'm an actor, I can play anything.”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

Speaking on The Today Show on January 13, 1986; as quoted in Whoopi Goldberg on Stage and Screen https://www.google.com/books/edition/Whoopi_Goldberg_on_Stage_and_Screen/WTH-SHM1LrkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22an%20actress%20can%20only%20play%20a%20woman%22 (2013) by Lisa Pertillar Brevard, p. 18.

“No one forced me to focus on technology. I just did it because I had a passion for it. When I started, there weren’t a lot of women role models. It was Carol Bartz, Judy Estrin. I think there’s been a lot of progress since then, and I think that if women have a passion and really want to succeed, they can. On a relative basis, the male-female ratio is certainly skewed to men, but on an absolute basis, there are a lot of very successful women in technology.”

Mary Meeker (1959) American venture capitalist and securities analyst

Interview with Wired: "The Indomitable Mary Meeker" https://www.wired.com/2012/09/mf-mary-meeker/ (21 September 2012)

“Just as the good actor perform well whatever role the poet assigns, so too must the good man perform whatever Fortune assigns. For she, says Bion, just like a poet, sometimes assigns the leading role, sometimes that of the supporting role; sometimes that of a king, sometimes that of a beggar. Do not, therefore, being a supporting actor, desire the role of the lead.”

Bion of Borysthenes (-325–-246 BC) ancient greek philosopher

As quoted by Teles of Megara, fr. 2, On Self-Sufficiency

“Just as our tools evolved culturally to fit our hands, so too our social roles evolved culturally to fit persisting aspects of the human mind. Roles that jar too violently with human nature are unlikely to persist for long, at least without the application of significant social force. If this is correct, it raises the possibility that some social roles might have evolved culturally to fit traits that, although found in both sexes, are more common in one than the other. This is emphatically not to say that there are some male roles and some female roles. But it is to suggest that there might be some social roles that suit more men than women, and others that suit more women than men — not just because of evolved physical differences but because of evolved psychological differences as well.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013), p. 261

“I feel that in order to truly be an actor, you have to differentiate yourself and your roles.”

Michelle Trachtenberg (1985) American actress

Interview by Michael J. Lee, Executive Editor for Radio Free Entertainment May 24, 2005 http://www.radiofree.com/profiles/michelle_trachtenberg/interview01.shtml

“As females enter the workplace, will our tendency to protect women create rules that will also protect men? Yes and no. Yes, when, for example, the new concern for doctors working fewer than eighty hours per week also affects men. No, when working-class jobs get divided into the males taking the hazardous jobs… and women taking safer jobs. And in professional careers, if males take irregular hours and specialties such as surgery, while females take regular hours and specialties like psychiatry, then we will only reinforce the female-protected class and the male-disposable class.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 213.

“I think there will always be a double standard between males and females, so I think that an actress is more likely to protect her public persona, so to speak, than an actor would be.”

Mila Kunis (1983) American actress

"Mila Kunis Says There Is A Double Standard For Males And Females In Hollywood" in Complex https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/07/mila-kunis-says-there-is-a-double-standard-for-males-and-females-in-hollywood (18 July 2012)

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