Hollywood actress Andie MacDowell constantly sought re-assurance during her masterclass at the Dubai International Film Festival (Diff) this week.
“Did I answer your question well?”, asked the Sex, Lies And Videotape star repeatedly with brows knitted together and a sheepish smile.
Perhaps it’s because she veered off topic constantly, unknowingly revealing her vulnerable side and yet coming off as strong woman who made complete sense — be it about gender politics in Hollywood or on how to nail an audition (“Learn the hell out of your lines” and “hire an agent”), she had the whole breadth covered.
“There has been sexism and it has been there for a while,” MacDowell said in an interview with Gulf News tabloid! after her riveting masterclass punctuated by practical life-lessons.
“But what I think is fascinating is that now women are speaking about it. During my generation, it would be looked as a complaint and you will be called a whiner. So you just keep your mouth shut and believe that it will come easier if you don’t complain kinda thing,” she explained.
Even her choice of clothes during the interview — white trousers, tailored matching jacket paired with silk baby pink blouse and animal print heels — seemed to say that for a woman to be taken seriously she had to pretty much dress like a man.
“But women are now asking why are men being asked such interesting complex question about their characters in a film, and you ask me my thoughts about getting old or about diminishing value. It has happened to me. That was the main question when I got to 40,” said MacDowell, who found fame in her 30s with Steven Soderberg’s Sundance winner Sex, Lies And Videotape.
A few haters even had the audacity to suggest that older successful actors such as Jack Nicholson may deign to work with her, despite her advancing age. She’s 58. But the sum of all those brutal episodes made her journey and her ascent to success exciting, even exhilarating.
MacDowell, born in South Carolina to a music teach mother and a father who worked as lumber yard executive, was the quintessential outsider to Hollywood. She had to watch out for herself and learn the ropes on her own. She was famously torn apart due to her Southern drawl, dubbed by Glenn Close, in Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan and was asked to lose weight by a modelling agency during her mid-twenties and called her fat.
“I don’t think people are always nice to you. If you make a fool of yourself then they enjoy it and have a heyday with it. But what is remarkable about me is that I recovered. That’s the interesting part of my story. When I think about my journey, it’s fascinating that not only did I survive, I thrived. I went on to remarkable things.”
Her hits such as the comedy with Bill Murray Groundhog Day, the 1994 iconic romantic comedy Four Weddings And A Funeral with Hugh Grant in which she played a wealthy American, stand proof to her steely determination. She’s also the face of a cosmetic giant, L’Oreal, who try to showcase their brand ambassadors as women of worth.
“Either I was going to quit or fight, and I chose to fight. It was hard to audition because people didn’t want to see me. From 23 to 30, I didn’t get a job. Then when I got Sex, Lies ..., it made a lot of money,” said MacDowell.
Her twenties may have been marked by rejection, but box office success is a strange miracle drug in the entertainment world.
“You make people money and they like you. Critical acclaim is great, but make them money and it get better. So I no longer became someone to laugh at,” she said.
MacDowell’s frank appraisal of Hollywood during her masterclass was electrifying, but she was relatively guarded during our interview.
She didn’t want to sound overly negative, but revealed that good roles are hard to come by in a patriarchal workplace.
“This is what happens everywhere. It is a universal problem, women have no power, we are disempowered as women and more or less men are okay with it because they are not disempowered. So it is hard to change when there are no women in control really,” said MacDowell.
She has learnt it all the hard way and she prefers to be in control of situation — especially on film sets. The mother of three children may not win a popularity contest at work, but she’s considerably happy when she knows what’s happening around her. There was also a time when she tried to shrug off her modelling roots too, in order to be taken seriously. But now, she claims that she has moved past that and learnt to embrace herself.
“Confirming my self-worth has been a part of my journey … But you have to work in order to feel a sense of self,” said MacDowell.
She’s currently a part of the TV series on Hallmark Channel called Cedar Cove.
“It’s really a sweet story set in small town. I play a judge and the best part of it was when I got to play it a bit sassy. She’s powerful and strong. We need more women like that. We need to see women in roles that are making a difference to the community.”
So what’s MacDowell’s utopian world like?
“I just want to work more often. I don’t want to be judged based on whether my movie is a hit or not. I was talking to Gerard Depardieu [French actor] and he says they just work and that nobody cares if it was a hit or not in France. I think that’s a luxury for them. In Hollywood, everyone is looking at how much your last movie made and that limits you as far as taking chances and being able to do all kinds of work.”
Andie MacDowell on ...
Her first visit to Dubai:
“Hopefully, we are going to do a safari tomorrow. I would like to ride a camel. The idea of riding a camel is exotic, I have never ridden a camel, but I have ridden horses though.”
Her recent headline about her joking that Hugh Grant appreciated her bottoms in a jumpsuit:
“That is the sad thing. You say something as a joke and you regret it. How do I possibly say anything without regretting it? It is unfortunate, but that it is how the press works. You say one silly thing and that’s what they run with. Sadly, I should just keep my mouth shut and never talk.”
On film festivals such as Diff:
“Filmmakers take more chances and you learn more from an indie movie. They are more complex and they feed you more. There’s an intelligent nature to those films shown in festivals.”
Did you know?
Andie MacDowell was pregnant when Sex Lies And Videotape became a critical and box office hit.
