Cate Blanchett stated that the #MeToo movement "got killed very quickly" in Hollywood, speaking on Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival. During a wide-ranging staged conversation, the Oscar-winning actress lamented the reversal of the movement's momentum in the industry, where she has been a vocal advocate for gender equality.
Blanchett's Remarks on #MeToo
"It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting," Blanchett said. She noted that while many with platforms could speak out safely about their experiences, the movement was nonetheless suppressed. "There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me," she explained. "And the so-called average woman on the street, person on the street, is saying MeToo. Why does that get shut down?"
According to Variety, Blanchett added: "What [the movement] revealed is a systemic layer of abuse, not only in this industry but in all industries, and if you don't identify a problem, you can't solve the problem."
Blanchett on Male-Dominated Film Sets
In 2018, Blanchett served as president of the Cannes jury and participated in a red-carpet protest. She and 81 other women stood on the steps of the Palais des Festivals, symbolizing the number of female directors selected for Cannes' competition lineup during that period—compared to 1,866 male directors. Reflecting on the ongoing power imbalance, she remarked: "I'm still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There's 10 women and there's 75 men every morning."
"I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same," she said. "You just have to brace yourself slightly, and I'm used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace." At the time of the women's march, Cannes organizers faced criticism for not doing more to publicly support the #MeToo and Time's Up initiatives. "Women are not a minority in the world, yet the current state of the industry says otherwise," Blanchett was quoted as saying.
