The uncomfortable audition that saw Anne Hathaway kiss 10 men: “I thought it sounded gross”
Hollywood has never been one of the most ethical industries out there. In fact, it’s an incredibly morally dubious place – although that’s to be expected when so much money and (male) power are at play.
Since the early days of the cinema industry, women have found themselves sidelined, even in spite of the few women who did manage to prove that female filmmakers and producers could have as much authority and skill as a man. Just look at Alice Guy-Blache, who made the first ever narrative film, pioneered many filmmaking techniques, and founded her own studio.
Yet, the women who helped carve cinema into the established art form it is today have long been marginalised in the history of filmmaking. Instead, it’s the male filmmakers and the executives who wield all of their power who made cinema a place of significant gendered (and racial) inequality.
You’d think that the industry would’ve improved over the years, as feminist movements have blossomed and #MeToo has helped women to step out of the shadows. And while there have been changes – from more female filmmakers working than ever before to heinous criminals like producer Harvey Weinstein being held accountable for his sex crimes – Hollywood is still far from perfect.
So much inappropriate behaviour has been normalised, and Anne Hathaway’s story about kissing ten men during an audition is the ultimate proof. The actor didn’t specify what film she was forced to kiss an array of potential co-stars for during an audition, but it would’ve been no earlier than the 2000s. Somehow, even in the 21st century, then, women in Hollywood are subjected to uncomfortable situations that you’re just expected to suck up and get on with. Do you want the part or not?
But that kind of attitude is simply how abuse, blackmail, and uneasy power dynamics continue to thrive. Hathaway found it gross then, and she finds it just as gross now. Talking to V Magazine, she revealed, “I was told, ‘We have ten guys coming today and you’re cast. Aren’t you excited to make out with all of them?’ And I thought, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ because I wasn’t excited. I thought it sounded gross.”
The actor continued, “And I was so young and terribly aware how easy it was to lose everything by being labelled ‘difficult,’ so I just pretended I was excited and got on with it. It wasn’t a power play, no one was trying to be awful or hurt me. It was just a very different time and now we know better.”
Regardless of whether there was a perceived power play or not, that sentiment of ‘I just pretended’ and ‘got on with it’ is terribly indicative of an industry where women have no choice but to be quiet if they want to retain their place.
It seems like being forced to kiss ten men during an audition wouldn’t fly today, what with the boom of the #MeToo movement over the past decade, but you never really know what goes on behind closed doors. There’s still a lot of corruption within Hollywood, and it would be naive to assume that female actors no longer feel the pressure of an industry that is still so male-dominated.
