I especially like Brit Marling because she wrote and starred in two of her own independent sci-fi films and now a series on Netflix she also wrote and stars in (The OA). Here Brit tells of how she was mostly only offered small hot blond bimbo parts in movies until she took the wheel and wrote her own screenplays:

I especially like Brit Marling because she wrote and starred in two of her own independent sci-fi films and now a series on Netflix she also wrote and stars in (The OA). Here Brit tells of how she was mostly only offered small hot blond bimbo parts in movies until she took the wheel and wrote her own screenplays:

“Bikini Babe 2” and “Blonde 4” are parts I auditioned for. If the female characters are lucky enough to have names, they are usually designed only to ask the questions that prompt the lead male monologue, or they are quickly killed in service to advancing the plot. Once, when I was standing in line for some open-call audition for a horror film, I remember catching my reflection in the mirror and realizing that I was dressed like a sex object. Every woman in line to audition for “Nurse” was, it seemed. We had all internalized on some level the idea that if we were going to be cast we’d better sell what was desired—not our artistry, not our imaginations—but our bodies.

It was having the power (which most actresses lack) of being her own writer that gave Brit the courage to stand up and walk out on Weinstein when he hit on her:

Consent is a function of power. You have to have a modicum of power to give it.... I think for me, I was able to leave Weinstein’s hotel room that day because I had entered as an actor but also as a writer/creator. Of those dual personas in me—actor and writer—it was the writer who stood up and walked out. Because the writer knew that even if this very powerful man never gave her a job in any of his films, even if he blacklisted her from other films, she could make her own work on her own terms and thus keep a roof over her head.

I’m telling this story because in the heat surrounding these brave admissions, it’s important to think about the economics of consent. Weinstein was a gatekeeper who could give actresses a career that would sustain their lives and the livelihood of their families. He could also give them fame, which is one of few ways for women to gain some semblance of power and voice inside a patriarchal world. They knew it. He knew it. Weinstein could also ensure that these women would never work again if they humiliated him. That’s not just artistic or emotional exile—that’s also economic exile.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/harvey-weinstein-and-the-economics-of-consent/543618/