Sandra Bullock has opened up about the misogyny she faced as a young actress trying to break into the industry.

Nowadays, the 62-year-old actor has made a big name for herself in Hollywood as a certified movie star, but there was a time when she was still trying to find her feet in the business we call show.

Discussing those early days, she told industry friend Jennifer Aniston the grimmer side of her path to fame.

‘I was in New York, I was a waitress, I was auditioning for every pervert that existed, asking me to drop my pants. I was like, “Nope, not the role for me.” I was working my way up,’ she explained.

Then, reflecting on how intentional she was about the direction of her career, continued: ‘Every working actor thinks you will never work again so you just take what you can get and make the most of it.

‘The only time I was intentional about my career was when I said, “I need to stop right now with the rom-coms,” because I was getting so much s**t for them.’

As she told Interview magazine, she made an intentional choice to join the cast of the 2004 crime thriller Crash.

Female stars coming up in the 80s and 90s are all too familiar with the barriers they faced as women in the industry, with the MeToo movement empowering many to come forward about their experiences and question industry practices.

Gina Rodriguez once recalled to The Hollywood Reporter being asked to wear a ‘tight black dress’ in front of the casting team to see if she would be pretty enough to cover magazines.

In 2017, Mila Kunis shared she had been made to feel ‘insulted, sidelined, paid less, creatively ignored, and otherwise diminished based on my gender’ – to name just a few.

As for Bullock, she’s been reminiscing plenty on her early career thanks to reprising her role for the sequel to 1998 hit Practical Magic, opposite Nicole Kidman.

Discussing why now was the right time to represent womanhood in Practical Magic 2, she added: ‘Now we’ve seen behind the curtain, and we see it’s all smoke and mirrors.

‘We get to have more agency over our narrative now and speak the truth, when back then we really couldn’t. There was a machine doing it for you.

‘In an odd way, I like it better now. That’s why Practical Magic 2 needs to be made now, because it gets to tell the story of what we’re allowed to do and talk about now, that no one wanted to talk about before,’ she reflected.


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