‘No, I Don’t Think Things Are Getting Better’: Virginia Madsen On Life After #MeToo
By Karl Quinn
“I’m really glad everyone’s talking about it, everyone’s aware of it, but I don’t really see things changing,” says the star of AIDS drama 1985 and the TV series The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair.
“Everything’s very loud right now and everyone’s standing up – but I think the people who are standing up are older and more powerful. I don’t know that young people are being given the opportunity to stand up, and I don’t know that we’re giving young people the language to stand up for themselves. Those are the people that I worry about.”
“No, I don’t think things are getting better,” she says. “But I think we’re becoming more aware. Hopefully you won’t be asked to have a meeting with a director in a hotel room alone.
Last year, Madsen elaborated on her experiences, telling Jezebel that as a young actor she had been subjected to “everything from groping to demeaning comments to making me feel bad about myself”.
She also claimed she had been bullied into doing nude scenes when her contract stipulated that she shouldn’t. And, she added, there were myriad “other things [that] catch you by surprise, like somebody suddenly just grabbing your ass or pushing you up against a wall.”
Her first screen role was in the 1983 movie Class, and her big scene involved a bit of slapstick that resulted in one of her breasts being exposed to a room full of snickering young men – including Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy and John Cusack. Asked about the movie by the AV Club in 2013, she said: “I don’t want to talk about that,” before adding: “Those guys were assholes. They were really shitty to me. It was bad. Bad memories.”
Madsen, whose biggest moments in a 36-year screen career include the horror film Candyman(1992) and her Oscar-nominated turn in Sideways (2004), has gone on the record about her own experiences as a young actor, though she has declined to name names and prefers not to dwell on those incidents as the things that define her. “Those people who frightened me when I was a younger person are not part of my everyday life,” she tells me. “They don’t matter, they simply don’t matter.”
But they do inform her sense of the business, and her assessment of its capacity for change.
Her first screen role was in the 1983 movie Class, and her big scene involved a bit of slapstick that resulted in one of her breasts being exposed to a room full of snickering young men – including Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy and John Cusack. Asked about the movie by the AV Club in 2013, she said: “I don’t want to talk about that,” before adding: “Those guys were assholes. They were really shitty to me. It was bad. Bad memories.”
Last year, Madsen elaborated on her experiences, telling Jezebel that as a young actor she had been subjected to “everything from groping to demeaning comments to making me feel bad about myself”.
She had experienced powerful men on set “talking about me like I wasn’t there,” she said. “Threatening me. Threatening my life. Threatening me that if I didn’t go over and blow him, I wasn’t going to work or, ‘I’m going to kick your head in’.”
She also claimed she had been bullied into doing nude scenes when her contract stipulated that she shouldn’t. And, she added, there were myriad “other things [that] catch you by surprise, like somebody suddenly just grabbing your ass or pushing you up against a wall.”
It all sounds dreadful, but surely this stuff belongs to the dark ages?
“No, I don’t think things are getting better,” she says. “But I think we’re becoming more aware. Hopefully you won’t be asked to have a meeting with a director in a hotel room alone.
“Let’s see what happens over the next few years,” she continues. “Let’s see if we get more female directors, let’s see if we get fewer predators. My experience tells me it won’t change, but I hope I’m wrong. I hope the young ones coming up are stronger and smarter, but you know, they’re kids, they’re just kids.”
The sorts of situations she experienced can’t just be hash-tagged out of existence. “I just think they’re going to be more secretive and the perpetrators are going to be more careful about how they do those things,” she says.
So, any advice?
“I just want to say to my younger sisters and brothers that it’s OK to not go to that meeting,” she says. “Even if you lose your agent, it’s all right. You can stand up for yourself.”
She doesn’t miss those days, not for a moment.
“The roles young girls get are one-dimensional, for the most part. Younger people are objectified. They give more story to a superhero than they do to a girl who’s struggling through high school.
At 57, Madsen is comfortable playing the role of maternal spirit guide – both on screen and off.
“When you get older you get more confident,” she says. “There’s a lot of things tha bother you as a young person that you just don’t give a shit about any more. Like being liked, or ‘I don’t think my body looks nice’. I don’t care about any of that. Life is just better as you get older.”
Virginia Madsen (“Candyman”)
Famous For:
- Sister of actor Michael Madsen (“Kill Bill”)
- Was married to actor Danny Huston (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine)
- 1989-1992
- “Dune” (1984)
- “Candyman” (1992)
- “Sideways” (2004)
Virginia Madsen
Actress from the United States
virginia-madsen.org
Virginia G. Madsen is an American actress and producer. She made her film debut in Class, which was filmed in her native Chicago. She soon moved to Los Angeles. en.
Born: September 11, 1961 (age 57), Chicago, Illinois, USA
Nationality: American
Height: 5’5″ (1.65m)
Net worth: $8 million (celebritynetworth.com)