15 Actresses Who’ve Called Out Hollywood on Sexism (Photos)

Oscar winning actress and comedian Mo’Nique took a break from starring in movies because she felt like she was being treated as if she just “got off the Greyhound bus.”

“When you win an Academy Award, what do you believe that the award is supposed to do?” the actress asked TheWrap rhetorically in a 2015 interview.

[...] when we get offers that appear as if I just got off the Greyhound bus and just got to Hollywood and we say, ‘Well, can we get what’s fair?’ That’s gonna appear overly aggressive if they [studios and production companies] are not used to people saying, ‘Can you just give us what’s fair.'

The OITNB actress said that the actor had requested an age limit for his TV wife.

Academy Award winning actress jumped to Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s defense at TheWrap’s Power Women’s Breakfast in 2015 and calling it “f—ing outrageous” that 37-year-old Gyllenhaal was recently told she was too old to play the lover of a 55-year-old man.

“Grindhouse” star Rose McGowan realized that being on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in 2007 represented everything that she had come to hate about her career and industry.

Kristen Stewart denounced gender disparities in the entertainment industry in 2015, saying “Hollywood is disgustingly sexist.”

Meryl Streep said that she counted up all of the male and female film critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website, which she said is often used by people to determine which movies to see, noticed the lack of female critics.

“I feel like it’s become open hunting season in how women are attacked and it’s not because of who we are as people, it’s because of how we look or our age,” she told E!

A cliché to be sure, but also what a producer threatened when I refused to pose semi-naked on the cover of a men’s magazine to promote our film. 

During The Women of Sundance brunch this past year, Kerry Washington spoke out against people labeling casting black women leads as taking a “risk.”

“I love acting and I love my day job, I love it so very much, but becoming a producer, producing Confirmation and starting my own production company, I get to hire other women, people of color and people of the LGBTQ community,” she said.

Sometimes I get jealous of white male showrunners when 90 percent of their questions are about characters, story structure, creative inspiration, or, hell, even the business of getting a show on the air.

Because as a result the interview of me reads like I’m interested only in talking about my outward appearance and the politics of being a minority and how I fit into Hollywood, blah blah blah.