Cate Blanchett Says the #MeToo Movement Got ‘Shut Down’ Before Closing the Gender Gap in Hollywood

Cate Blanchett lamented that the #MeToo movement has largely vanished from the conversation in Hollywood, leaving very little impact on women in show business.

On Sunday, May 17, the Lord of the Rings actress, 57, spoke at a live event during the Cannes Film Festival when the conversation turned to gender equality in Hollywood and the #MeToo movement.

Blanchett said she believes the entire movement, which saw women share stories of assault and mistreatment by men in power, “got killed very quickly,” which she described skeptically as “interesting,” per the Associated Press.

“There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me,” Blanchett said. “And the so-called average woman on the street, person on the street, is saying MeToo. Why does that get shut down?”

Blanchett noted that, while the movement saw many powerful men taken to task for their past behavior and even alleged crimes, she still sees a massive gender gap in show business.

“I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning,” she explained.

Blanchett served as the president of the jury in Cannes in 2018. At the time, she took part in a red carpet protest in which she and 81 other women appeared on the steps of the Palais des Festivals to represent the 81 female directors who had been selected for the festival that year. By contrast, 1,866 male directors had been selected.

She added in her live chat on Sunday, “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.”