One of Hollywood’s most dazzling leading actresses, Salma Hayek opens up and shares her opinion on Hollywood sexism, claiming that the system treats actresses like performing monkeys and wants to get rid of them once they realise they are smart.
“Hollywood is not going to change and give it to women because it is all guys,” the actress said.
During a talk at the Cannes film festival, she said: “From the beginning, I realised I wasn’t being treated equally as an actress.”
“It is true that maybe if you are pretty you can get parts easier but it’s really violent to assume if you are pretty you are stupid. Hollywood’s particularly macho. If they realise that you are smart, their anger gets multiplied,” Hayek said.
To many movers and shakers young actresses are playthings, she claimed.
“It’s very violent, this natural force to try to suppress. That is why we have a problem with women behind the camera as directors and producers,” she told one of the Women in forums, the actress organises each year at the festival.
According to Hayek, Hollywood had disregarded and disrespected the female market.
“They have not realised that women are a great economic power. These people don’t understand we are a huge audience. We have been neglected for so long they don’t know what we want to watch.” The actress stressed.
“We don’t even know because we always think of who we will be watching the movie with – the husband, the family, the children,” she told the reporters.
The actress blamed movie executives’ ignorance for failing to properly play to the female demographic.
“Today almost 80 percent of the decision-makers of what movie or television show to watch are female. Women work, we make money and we all want to go out and have fun much more than before, and they have not capitalised on that.”
