Jane Fonda Quotes

Women over 35 have great stories, and the actresses are there, but you can't get the movies made.

There are really very few roles for women in films in which you can also make a living.

On American TV, there just aren't a lot of female leads in comedy, especially at the peak of all the Judd Apatow stuff.

I'm from a generation of fantastic actresses. It's a big pool of really wonderful actresses, and so many of them we never even get to see on the screen anymore.

I think for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films.

It is not easy to grow old in this business, when you are a woman above all, in the cinema.

In television, women can really run anything. It can be a comedy, it can be a drama, it can be genre, it can be anything. But in films, women are still getting to the top.

Believe me, it's not easy being an actress and a producer, especially with no big daddy to support you.

Being a woman in music was fine, but when I wanted to direct, I was poking my head into a man's world.

I don't understand why there aren't more powerful female directors. I don't have the answers, but I hope that things may start to shift and that studios will employ more women to handle strong and interesting material.

The odds are not in your favor the older you get, especially if you're a woman in this business.

I took my acting very seriously. I did over 40 films, and naturally, some of them were called B-movies because the woman was at the top of the billing. Women couldn't star in their own movies.

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn't been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn't like what a woman her age is offered. That's a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn't work the other way around.

A director has to be on the set when the crew is called and is the last one to leave at night. I'm not saying it's not possible, but that's partly why we're not seeing more women.

Why aren't there these epic roles for women, for whatever age you are?

Age is definitely an issue for women in TV. There comes a point - especially if you're a woman - when your career just falls off a cliff. I'm not being self-pitying. That's just the way it is.

I think being a woman in Hollywood is a big enough challenge. It really is. I don't want to be one of those people who complain. But the lack of roles out there - it's unbelievable.

People always say to me, "What's wrong with Hollywood? They don't want to make female-driven movies." And that's not where the problem lies. It lies with us, in society. When we make these movies, nobody goes to see them.

I think it's good that we're talking about it, but I think there's still a gendered nature to the way that people see female directors' skill sets. And I think we need to keep examining that. I don't know if people know how complicated the issue really is.

I'd say it's far more challenging to be female and be a showrunner. People are not surprised to see a black person running this show, but the female aspect is the thing that I get asked about.

[On filmmaking:] Cardinal rule: It's a youth business.

There is no blacklist. In the first place, in the entertainment business, money talks, bullshit walks. So Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins won't be blacklisted because they are bankable stars. In the second place, if you are a woman, the only things you're going to be blacklisted for in Hollywood are body fat and aging.

I was also told some years ago that I shouldn't 'waste my time' with female-centric films because the audience was not ready for it.

I grew up doing plays - I went to a stage school after school - and it's always something that I've wanted to do, but, in a weird way, if you do television and film and you didn't go to drama school and don't have a theatrical background, it's hard to get your foot in the door. In the same way that it is for theater actors to get into television and film. There's a weird prejudice that goes both ways.

Something happens in the middle when women are in their 30s, and we can start with an array of things that happen, whether it is - you hope this doesn't exist any longer - but overt discrimination; whether it's subtle gender discrimination, which absolutely does exist among men and women; whether it's the fact that it gets hard to juggle at that point children, housework, etc. But people still have to go home and cook the dinner and clean the dishes and get the beds made and so on. And so, for a whole bunch of reasons, women tend to fall out in their 30s still today.