Actress Cate Blanchett has said the #MeToo movement in Hollywood “got killed very quickly”, adding that gender imbalance and workplace culture issues continue to persist on film sets across the United States.
Speaking during a staged conversation at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, the two-time Oscar winner reflected on the trajectory of the movement, which gained global prominence in 2017 after widespread allegations of abuse, harassment and sexism against powerful figures in the entertainment industry.
“It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting,” Blanchett said. “There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me. And the so-called average woman on the street, person on the street, is saying #MeToo. Why does that get shut down?”
Blanchett also said that gender inequality remains visible on film sets in the United States.
“I’m still on film sets, and I do the headcount every day. There are 10 women, and there are 75 men every morning,” she said. “I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same. 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.”
The #MeToo movement erupted in 2017 after several women publicly spoke out about alleged abuse and harassment in Hollywood, triggering calls for structural reforms across the film industry.
In 2018, Blanchett served as jury president at the Cannes Film Festival and joined a red-carpet protest highlighting gender disparity in the festival’s competition section.
Blanchett and 81 other women stood on the steps of the Palais des Festivals, representing the number of female directors selected for the Cannes competition lineup at the time, compared with 1,866 male directors selected over the festival’s history.