Disney has proved without a shadow of a doubt that movies with a female lead work.Collection: Movies
I played this character twice in live action, and now I've become an animated character. It was actually fun to see myself drawn - I've never been a drawn character before.
I remember when 'A League of Their Own' was coming out in '92, when I was doing interviews, it seemed like every interviewer at some point would say, 'So... would you consider this a feminist movie?' People are worried that it's a taboo thing, so I took great relish in saying, 'Yes, I would. Write that, yes.'
This dapper little mouse that wore such cute clothes and said such interesting things, yeah. I thought it was a great idea to have a mouse like that in your family, so now I get to see what it was like.
The motto of my institute has always been, 'If they can see it, they can be it.' And it's literally true. If we show something on-screen, it will change what happens in real life.
We're showing kids a world that is very scantily populated with women and female characters. They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do.
Identifying with a character is one of the best parts of seeing a movie, but as women, we've had to train ourselves to experience the male journey.
I have an elbow that bends the wrong way, and I'd do things like stand in an elevator and the doors would close, and I'd pretend that my arm had got caught in it, and then I'd scream, 'Ow, ow, put it back!'
I have a Web site that parents and girls can use to learn about Title IX and take action if they find their school is not in compliance. Thirty years after Title IX passed, 80 percent of schools are not in compliance.
It's a fantasy that we could have a president who could actually make choices based on what's right, rather than having to weigh the political fallout. But that's sort of what we're showing. And you can dream.
We're making this as entertainment. But God willing, if this show stays on and people see a woman in that office for a while, I think it will help people become more used to it. It's certainly about time that we had a few female presidents.
So many other countries have had female leaders, in fact the U.S. ranks 61st in female representation in government and I think it is startling and sign of a change that needs to be made.
I just read that 81 percent of Americans are ready to vote for a woman. So it sounds like America is ready.
As an Independent, she has no party backing... Her being the first Independent president trumps the fact that she's a woman. It causes even more upheaval in Washington than her being female.
Look at the number of cop shows and lawyer shows and forensics shows... I think there could be room for two quite different examinations of the same political office.
When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.
When I was first starting out was also when I first started really paying attention to the Oscars and stuff like that. And I remember thinking, 'Wow, everything is great for women in Hollywood, because Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Jessica Lange, Sally Field - they're all doing incredible work.'
I had one date in high school - that was it, and he didn't ask me out again, because I was taller than everybody. I was very gangly and awkward, and I wore weird clothes that I made.
I get the feeling that characters are written female when they have to be, and all the other characters are male, and it doesn't occur to somebody that the lawyer, the best friend, the landlord, whoever, can be female.
I was once up for a part, and the male star was also producing the movie. They were talking about meeting with him or having an audition with him, and then we get the message, 'He wants to have dinner with you.' I said, 'Is that the audition, or is it that he just wants to have dinner with me?'
Having been in some roles that really resonated with women, I became hyper-aware of how women are represented in Hollywood.
I was averaging about one movie a year my whole career, and that was because I'm fussy. I probably could have done more.
The big takeaway I got from 'Thelma & Louise' was the reaction of women who had seen the movie being so profound, so different. It was overwhelming, and it made me realise how few opportunities we give women to feel excited and empowered by female characters, to come out of a movie pumped.
I never intended to become a data head. I could never have predicted it would play such an important role in my life. Yet here we are: My Institute on Gender in Media has sponsored the largest amount of research ever done on gender depictions in media, covering a 20-year-plus span.
How do we encourage a lot more girls to pursue science, technology, and engineering careers? By casting droves of women in STEM jobs today in movies and on TV.
What I didn't realize until much later, in hindsight, was I had subconsciously been choosing projects where the woman was in charge of her own destiny.
One thing I always want to clear up was the notion that I 'took time off to have a baby.' A lot people leapt to that conclusion because becoming a parent happened to coincide with film roles tapering off.
Certainly 'Wonder Woman' needed to be made, and I'm so beyond thrilled with how it came out. I met Patty Jenkins, and I told her, 'I'm sure you're going to make a sequel, and if you need anybody Amazonian, there's always me. I'm available.'
I was really lucky that I had an aunt who was very inspiring to me. She was different than anybody in my family on either side.
My parents are both from Vermont, very old-fashioned New England. We heated our house with wood my father chopped. My mom grew all of our food. We were very underexposed to everything.
The whole point of why I'm doing this is to show all kids, boys and girls, that women take up half the space and do half of the interesting things in the world and have half of the dreams and ambitions. Our slogan is, "If they see it, they can be it."Collection: Girl
All of Hollywood is run on one assumption: That women will watch stories about men, but men won't watch stories about women. It is a horrible indictment of our society of we assume that one half of our population is just not interested in the other half.Collection: Running
Kids need to see entertainment where females are valued as much as males.Collection: Kids