Minnie Driver still frustrated her complaints weren't taken seriously
Minnie Driver has admitted it "annoys her no end" that she was vilified for speaking out about her Hollywood experiences of misogyny, 30 years before the #MeToo movement.
Minnie Driver has admitted it "annoys her no end" that she was vilified for speaking out about her Hollywood experiences, 30 years before the #MeToo movement.
The 54-year-old star - who has 15-year-old son Henry with former partner Timothy J. Lea - was "crucified" for speaking out about misogyny and the way she was treated in Hollywood, including being asked to fake an orgasm in front of 17 executives for an advertisement audition, and branded a troublemaker, and while she thinks the industry has seen a host of positive changes in recent years, she is still upset that she wasn't takens eriously at the time.
She told The Times magazine: "You try to find a mechanism that could help you, that you could tell someone, ‘This thing is happening, please help me make it stop, but also help make it stop for that person over there and that woman over there.'...
"I was completely and utterly vilified for being some sort of ‘whistleblower’. This idea of ‘causing trouble on the set’ — ‘She called her lawyer.’ ”
Asked if she thinks things have really changed now, she said: “Yes, I do. But not because of some kind of systemic epiphany that men had. Rather, because they know that there’s accountability now.
"There are actually mechanisms in place [which mean] that kind of behaviour can’t be hidden. And I think #MeToo put a dent in it, but I just don’t know whether that power dynamic is ever really going to be redressed.
"Revolutions are bloody. People want to maintain the status quo for as long as they possibly can until they absolutely can’t and then, kicking and screaming, people will change.
“It annoys me no end that there wasn’t recourse and there was actually punitive stuff that happened [to me] as a result.
"But here we are talking about this new project that I couldn’t love more, and I’m 54 and it’s been 30 years…”
The 'Serpent Queen' star is delighted to see actresses including Margot Robbie and Zendaya taking on producer roles on their movies.
She said: “They’re like, ‘I’m part of this creation, I am making this happen.’ And I think maybe that is how it changes.
“We all should have been doing that back in the Nineties.
“When I think about the work that I did on scripts, the fixing things, the making stuff better, absolutely uncredited.
“I made so many of the roles that I was in through improv, through rewriting, through ideas that were all then completely uncredited. So what’s great is that these girls are now getting credit for it.”
