Ellen Barkin Quotes

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

One of the sad commentaries on the way women are viewed in our society is that we have to fit one category. I have never felt that I had to be in one category.

There's an unfair position that women are sometimes put in, in the context of superhero movies and action movies, where at once they have to be very strong and fierce but also sexy.

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

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

Women get the attention when we get into the men's arena, and that's sad.

Females want other females to be really strong, so there are a whole lot of scripts that are basically just male parts renamed as a girl.

But there are still only certain film genres where a woman can stand out, be heroic, be the centerpiece.

I hope the fathers and mothers of little girls will look at them and say 'yes, women can.'

Maybe studios don't want to see women acting in a way that isn't womanly. Maybe people don't.

I'll never forget when I was running, when I was knocking on doors for my first office as I served as a Cleveland city councilwoman and to have older men say to me, 'Can you do this and be a wife and a mother?' Excuse me? Women make the world go round. We multitask... But to have that kind of condescending question asked of me in modern times.

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 won't say there aren't 'smart' roles for women, but the variety is limited. I feel the real representation is not widely available in Bollywood.

When I first came to Hollywood to make 'Mortal Kombat' back in the day, there was this rule that female-led action movies don't work and American studios didn't want to make them.

Ultimately, so many things come down to money, but particularly when it comes to superheroes - people really thought that only men loved action movies and only men would go see a superhero movie.

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

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.

I was frustrated in general with the way women are always portrayed. And it's always through a man's eyes.

Let's just start with the word 'diva.' It is obviously a sexist slight - a term that is only applied to women, almost always in a derogatory way. It's usually applied to women who are viewed as overly ambitious. It is applied to demanding women, to women who follow their own path.

In Hollywood, only a female who's massively damaged is interesting.

Women do feel like they're in a box. Society, Hollywood, some men-they want to wrap women up in a neat little package.

I think that there's a tendency for actors who play strong women to have them take on all the worst characteristics of men, to become cold and detached and hardened.

We thought we'd write a good script for women, giving them the fun roles that generally men get.

The whole world is starting to realize that it was the most unwise thing for our society to have ignored women power, to run the society with male priorities.

There are some strong female performers out there. But the industry's pre-occupation with the packaging of how a woman looks has gone completely the other way, back to almost the 60s, early 70s.