Gina Gershon Quotes

I love acting; I love movie sets and movies, but, at the same time, there's something about the position of women in that world that frightens me a lot. I find it nearly inhuman to be an actress.

I didn't want to be good for a girl: I wanted to be as good, if not better than, all the guys.

I wrote my first play, Uncommon Women and Others, in the hopes of seeing an all-female curtain call in the basement of the Yale School of Drama. A man in the audience stood up during a post show discussion and announced, “I can't get into this, it's all about girls.” I thought to myself, “Well, I've been getting in to Hamlet and Laurence of Arabia my whole life, so you better start trying.”

Hindi cinema hasn't moved at all in terms of roles for actresses beyond 18 years.

As women and men, we're not primed and taught to feel that women are as inspirational as men.

People often ask me why I don't take up more heroine-oriented roles. My question is, 'Where are these roles?' I really appreciate actresses who sign only films with meaty roles. However, there aren't too many of them. The industry is simply male-dominated.

I was a fan of the idea of Red Sonja, but the gender politics of the character made her hard to read, for me, at times.

So many times, you pick up a script, and you think, 'OK, so she's the sexy one,' or, 'She's the ex-girlfriend.'

I still feel, when I meet actresses, no matter how high-profile they are, that they are starved for good roles.

Women's roles in the movies remain, for the most part, girlfriends, mothers, wives.

People like to watch surfing, but maybe the girls get the wrong kind of promotion and the wrong kind of press. I might be called a feminist for saying it, but it's like the girls are promoted sexually rather than what they're achieving.

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

I'm not sure if I should say this, and it might sound arrogant of me, but I think there is a tendency to view female characters as consumer products.

I never want to make any characters one-dimensional, especially as women can often be portrayed as the dark one or the evil one.

As a female in metal, I'm going to get ostracized one way or another. So, if I'm going to have people hating me because I'm a female in metal, I might as well get people loving me because I'm a female in metal, too.

Roles for women need to be better written.

It's frustrating to see that people still get shocked when they see a woman doing action.

When I started playing tennis in Class V, I used to be the only girl on the court along with 20-odd boys. So, I am used to being in the company of boys. In fact, I have very few girlfriends, and even my besties are boys; I find it much easier to get along with them.

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

The audience simply don't find a heroine picking a fight with 10 guys as convincing as a hero. So the industry always sticks to psychological thrillers and ghost movies for heroine-oriented projects and this can sustain only for a short time.

All writers are battling and fighting as to how a woman should be characterised.

I want people - boys and girls - to be sat at home watching me alongside the likes of Rio Ferdinand or Frank Lampard, thinking that it's normal, that we all know what we're talking about, and that they're not judging me at home just because I'm a female.

Why still be pretty and all that when there's so many girly female rappers already? You can be a rock star instead.

Most drag queens dress up as super women, as an over exaggeration of the female form, because we like women, usually powerful women. I think that's why we are so over exaggerated; we are an amplification of the women who empowered us in our youth.

Some people say heroines just have to look good and provide the glamour. Some say, from dance-n-song routines, heroines have come a long way. Today, the heroine's name adds weight to the film, though maybe they can't carry the whole film on their names. I believe, yes, we do contribute a lot to films.