Venice brings it!

I was perusing the V Community the other day when I came across this article from the wonderful Women and Hollywood blog which talks about the invisible glass ceiling women face in the industry.

Wow. It spoke. Really spoke to me. I felt a great sense of frustration at the truths she raised and I feel it keenly because I am in the industry and as an actor see how women are marginalised. If you read my post from the 23.10.09 about the event I went to for Women in Film and Television, you will see that the statistics have women with half the number of roles as men. It certainly isn’t as bad as the statistic that men are twenty times more likely to direct a film, but it still stands out as revoltingly unbalanced. To that you also have to add a number of other factors into the equation – namely that there are vastly more female than male actors and that when there are roles for women, they are often stereotyped as the love interest, hot girl, girlfriend, mother, wife etc. and generally regaled to supporting roles, lacking in dimension or interest beyond their relationship to the male character.

The saddest thing is this seeming lack of support from other women. Men support each other, why can’t we? Are we somehow programmed to see women as rivals? Why is it that it is women who are the most critical of women as discussed in this article. Why is it that we expect men to be good but are surprised when women are. Can’t we champion each other, encourage each other to rise above the glass ceiling?

All this makes me appreciate just what Venice is doing and what it represents. I said it before but I’ll say it again, this series is groundbreaking. Really. The mere fact that it’s creative team is made up of women, that it’s women centric, that it has women over 35… It makes me want to pimp the frack out of this thing, because I want this to be a success. I want the effort put in to reap rewards, to be viable and to make a statement that women in film and TV can bring it!

Venice is not accepting donations, so I bought my V merchandise and instead will donate to Ela Their’s project. To whoever is reading this out there – I hope that you will support Venice the Series. Please join the V community for free at http://www.venicetheseries.com/ because ultimately we have the power over whether this series will continue...