Gender Representation in Media Quotes

In Hollywood, you play a mom and instantly, you've got osteoporosis.

Especially in entertainment geared toward young people, the women are much stronger than they used to be. There's not really the damsel in distress anymore. I think the stereotype still possibly lives in different genre pictures but, in entertainment for the younger generation, they're used to women being equal and being strong. I think if you don't portray that, it would be kind of weird.

Everyone covering 'Stage Beauty' asks me: 'What's it like to wear a dress?'

Kids need to see entertainment where females are valued as much as males.

I just started asking my friends if they had noticed. None of them - feminists, mothers, daughters - noticed until I pointed it out. Then I decided to bring it up within the industry. I knew a lot of people, so I'd say, "Have you ever noticed how few female characters there are in kids movies?" when I met a director, a producer, whatever. And they said, "Oh, but that's not true anymore."

In movies, I hope women aren't always portrayed as sex symbols. People like Drew Barrymore are paving the way for girls my age. Hopefully I can pave the way for young actresses, too.

We need to see men and women as equal partners, but it's hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!

What's special with 'Corrie' is that they have the comedy element, women are funny as well - they might do the emotional stuff, they might do the drama, but they're really funny too.

No matter what, I'm in a very small club. There are very few women who have directed studio-level commercial films - very few.

You only ever see four women leads on TV today in the 'Housewives' shows.

I've noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately. And when I look around the room at the women here and I think about the performances that I've watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy and sometimes not. Sometimes honourable and sometimes not. And what I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary and it's what turning me on.

I feel that the thing about film and particularly about TV, actually, is it's being created now. We're living in the best time so far because there are many more women writing and women directing, women producing, and people are finally catching on to the fact that women want to go and buy tickets to see female characters and more than one in a film. So I actually think it's a very fertile time to be a woman over 40.