Oscar-winner Julianne Moore has hit out at Hollywood bosses for “perpetuating the myth” that successful women cannot have families too.
The actress, 58, said female characters with successful careers were too often depicted with empty personal lives.
She told ES Magazine: “I’ve seen women who have built big lives for themselves, they have big careers, and they have families too.
“But I don’t feel like that representation is out there. If you see a successful woman in a movie, she never has a family.
“Why do we continue to perpetrate that mythology that it’s not possible?
“That somehow if you’ve managed to become the boss you can’t have any kids too? Or you can’t have a marriage that’s valuable?”
The After The Wedding actress said describing women as “of a certain age” was “one of my pet peeves”.
She said: “It’s as if you are saying that her age is so terrible that you don’t want to mention it.
“You wouldn’t say ‘a man of a certain age’.
“Obfuscating your age or skirting around it, or trying to be delicate about it, that’s what makes me crazy. It’s not so horrible to be in your 50s, it’s not horrible at all. It’s simply part of life.”
On her 16-year marriage to director and writer Bart Freundlich, she said: “I think for anybody in any industry who travels a lot, there’s a danger – if you don’t spend time together – you’re going to be in trouble.
“Because we always had children we stayed together a lot as a family. But if you go away for a year to make a movie, your relationship’s not going to survive.”
The full interview appears in this week’s issue of ES Magazine, out on Thursday.
