Reese Witherspoon: It’s hard being a woman in the film industry
Reese Witherspoon thinks it is hard to be a woman over 25 in the film industry.
The ‘Wild’ star admits it is tough to be a female director, writer or actress in Hollywood but believes the "dawn of streaming" has encouraged more women to watch films.
She said: "It’s hard to be a female director, or a female writer, or an actress over 25. I think the dawn of streaming and the way that people are watching content now has been a great benefit because maybe women are too busy to go all the way to the theatre, but they still want to see a diverse array of women on screen. I’ve been hearing for 27 years that women don’t show up to see women in movies, and I know empirically that is not true."
And the 41-year-old actress – who has Ava, 17, and Deacon, 13, with her ex-husband Ryan Phillippe and four-year-old son Tennessee with her spouse Jim Toth – has her own production company Pacific Studios, which she formed to help create more movies about the topics women want to watch.
Asked why she formed the company, she added: "Women are voracious readers. Women want story, character, nuance, emotion, heart, and a lot of that is in books, but they weren’t being bought by studios unless they were mega blockbusters."
Reese is a very ambitious individudual, something which she says she gets from her mother.
She shared to the new issue of NET-A-PORTER’s The EDIT magazine: "My mother was very ambitious. She worked lots of different jobs. My goal [is that] we’ll get to a place where, when [people call our daughters] ambitious, they’ll say, ‘Yes. So what?’ I really hope that the women of the world know how strong they are and will demand respect and get it."
