Tag: benedict cumberbatch

But you know, my dear ex-girlfriend Olivia, we’re both very good friends still, but I used to berate her for reading Hello and Heat and all those rags, Grazia. I mean, I know why girls read them, of course they f—ing do. She’s a smart one, and she knew to look at it and go, “This is nonsense.” But it was entertaining, you know, hairdressing reading. I quite get why in the handbags of smart, as well as kind of pop culturally hungry girls, they’re great entertainment. But they can be really damaging because people do take them too seriously.

And it also then starts to affect people’s behavior so that this thing of image — even with men now. The pressure is always more on for girls in every sense. You have a really rough ride of it — in every single sense you have a rough ride of it. Seriously, like, actors can’t complain compared to actresses — it’s horrific. I mean, in Hollywood as well, the sanest, smartest people I know are beholden to the body image, to the f—ing aging shit. Of course we’re visual vessels to portray characters and tell stories, so of course people are going to want to see their better reflection or someone who’s dazzling or stunning or attractive. But it’s great when people like Charlize Theron can have “an ugly moment.” Then when people say, “it was just ‘unbeautifying’ her — that’s why she got the Oscar,” I just want to get up and punch them. Not only was it an incredible performance in “Monster” and a really unattractive character in “Young Adult,” where she was extraordinary, but she’s proven that actresses can have more than a shelf life, that they can have careers dependent on where they are and who they are at any given time in their life, not trying to maintain the idealized youth thing.