Cate Blanchett says she’s frustrated by how quickly the momentum behind the #MeToo movement faded in Hollywood, telling an audience at the Cannes Film Festival that meaningful change around gender equality still feels painfully slow.
Speaking in France this week, the Australian actor said she’s long been outspoken about the issue but feels many conversations around women’s experiences have been “shut down.”
“It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting,” Blanchett 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, person on the street, is saying ‘me too’. Why does that get shut down?”
Blanchett, 57, said the imbalance remains obvious on film sets.
“I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning,” she said.
“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.”
Her comments echo concerns she raised years earlier at Cannes. In 2018, while serving as president of the festival jury, Blanchett led a protest on the red carpet alongside 81 women. The number symbolized the total female directors selected for Cannes competition since the festival began. During the same period, 1,866 male directors had been chosen.
Julianne Moore shared similar thoughts during a Women in Motion event at Cannes over the weekend. Moore recalled working on sets as recently as 2016 where women were almost entirely absent behind the camera.
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“I can remember being on a set not too long ago where the only women were me and the third AC [assistant camera],” she said.
“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 said things have improved somewhat, with more women now working on crews, but added that it was rare to see that kind of representation earlier in her career.
The #MeToo movement was originally started in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke to support survivors of sexual violence. It became a global movement in 2017 after actor Alyssa Milano encouraged people to share their experiences using the hashtag on social media.
