Frances McDormand Quotes

There is this idea that you have to play heroines or women who succeed.

I won't take parts where the female character has no substance.

The parts for women, you're either like the quietly suffering wife or the wild girl.

There aren't enough good roles for strong women. I wish we had more female writers. Most of the female characters you see in films today are the 'poor heartbroken girl.'

With a male-centric show, the women are usually very two-dimensional.

Part of the problem is that many directors treat female characters too often as precious. Or they want to live in a fantasy world where they just do spinning hook kicks and knock out guys who are six foot four, and that doesn't work either.

I think part of the pressure put on 'strong female characters' comes from the fact that there is so often 'the team girl,' who must be all things to all people. Part of avoiding that is having as many female characters as I can, and allowing them to thrive in their own right, not inside a framework they didn't ask for and don't want.

When we create female characters, I think often there is a tendency to kind of make female characters emotionally bulletproof.

My women characters should not exist only to play the 'love interest' of a male character.

There are so many female roles - particularly for young women - that are just somebody's girlfriend or somebody's daughter, or that are accessories to the main story rather than being three-dimensional characters.

We don't have enough young, female antiheroes. We don't accept women as antiheroes the way we do the men.

I think that Hollywood misconstrues actresses saying, 'Oh I wanna play a strong female character,' like we all want to play, like, superheroes or something.

We often see literature about women that impair and immerse the women themselves, such as when women are portrayed as objects of consumerism.

The only reason I would stay away from a period piece is because sometimes the women are painted in a very stereotypical weakling, wallflower way - that's something I don't want to do. I want to show strength in the women I play, and a journey of some sort.

There's no need for a female character that does things like a male character; that's not what makes interesting female characters in my view.

I can't stomach most of the movies about women.

There aren't good roles for women: the female parts aren't developed: the women are serving the men.

I'm interested in playing lots of different complex women.

I think male roles are generally much better written. So for actresses, we're always dealing with trying to inject a role with more truth than the writer possibly had in mind.

I'm so sick of hearing how there's no strong roles for women. I don't care about strong roles. I just want to see women who are characters! A nun, a serial killer, a housewife, as long as there's some depth there.

James Patterson has a way with female characters. He understands women in a way that a lot of male writers don't.

There have been a few times when I've read a script and it's really cool but the girl character's just kind of pathetic. It's not going to do me any favours just being 'the girl' in a cool movie.

I am tired of women playing action heroes like men, because they are not men. But sometimes they are written like men.

With 'Holes' I was troubled that there weren't very many female characters. I tried to put them in where I could. But the setting didn't lend itself to girls.

When they make a woman's picture, they treat it like a 'woman's picture.' In the '40s, they didn't treat Joan Crawford movies like that, but as the big movies of their year. I'm upset that there's no 'Terminator' with a woman in Arnold Schwarzenegger's role. Because that would make just as much money.