Hollywood needs to offer women more diversity, says Susan Sarandon
Academy Award-winner Susan Sarandon is adamant the time is right for Hollywood to look beyond the safety of "interchangeable" young actresses and embrace stories across all ages and races.
Academy Award-winner Susan Sarandon is adamant the time is right for Hollywood to look beyond the safety of "interchangeable" young actresses and embrace stories across all ages and races.
Speaking on her first visit to Hong Kong at Art Basel yesterday, Sarandon said today's women could have it all, provided their goal was not perfection and they should not be afraid to ask for a hand along the way.
The 68-year-old received the Liberatum Cultural Honour in partnership with Swire Properties on Friday for her outstanding contribution to cinema.
A firm advocate for role diversity, Sarandon was critical of the lack of variety in not only casting but also the stories portrayed by Hollywood films.
"There are so many young women on TV and in films who to me look interchangeable," she told the .
"I think that Hollywood as a whole suffers from a lack of imagination because they are businessmen, and so if they have a shoe that sells really well, they don't want to go to a boot the next season."
Sarandon believes there are opportunities for producers to look to the wider community to tell stories across age, race and gender.
"If you pick up the paper, stories … are not all about white men of a certain age," she said. "If everybody decided to green-light a story that really moved them there would be more diversity."
Sarandon won an Academy Award in 1996 for where she played a nun opposite a death-row inmate played by Sean Penn.
A committed humanitarian, Sarandon was kicked out of the Academy Awards in 1993 for using the platform to shame the United States government for its treatment of HIV-positive Haitian refugees in Cuba.
"It's hard to live with yourself, really, you have one of those moments where you say something and you don't, or at least not take part in it, that haunts you for the rest of your life," she said of her policy to speak out.
Despite appearing at Art Basel, the actress said she was not in the market for new pieces, and was passing her collection of photographs and paintings on to her family.
"Now what I'm doing is giving my kids everything. I'm trying to do it before I die. I'm dividing everything up. I don't want them to be bickering," she said.
