Cate Blanchett Laments That #MeToo Movement ‘Got Killed Very Quickly’

Cate Blanchett has admitted that she isn’t feeling the impact of the #MeToo movement in her working life.

The two-time Oscar winner recently gave a talk at the Cannes Film Festival, where Variety reported that she said the movement – which saw many high-profile women speaking out about workplace harassment, abuse and gender-based discrimination in the late 2010s – “got killed very quickly”.

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

“What [the #MeToo movement] revealed is a systemic layer of abuse, not only in this industry but in all industries, and if you don’t identify a problem, you can’t solve the problem.”

Cate claimed: “I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day, and it is still, you know… there’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning.

“I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same. You just have to brace yourself slightly.”

She added: “I’m used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace. I think it has an effect on the work.”

Back in 2018, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Cate was one of 82 women who protested on the Cannes Film Festival red carpet the same year she served as the event’s jury president.

This number was chosen to represent the 82 female directors who’d been showcased at the festival at the time, compared to their 1,866 male peers.

“Women are not a minority in the world, yet the current state of the industry says otherwise,” she was quoted as saying at the time.

More recently, the Australian performer admitted last year that she was “serious about giving up acting” after, in her words, spending “a lifetime getting comfortable with the feeling of being uncomfortable”.