Emily Ratajkowski Quit Acting, Fired Her Team Because ‘Hollywood Is F—ed Up’: ‘I Felt Like a Piece of Meat Who People Were Judging’
Emily Ratajkowski announced in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times that she has basically quit acting because Hollywood is so “fucked up.” The supermodel started her acting career in a major way with a supporting role opposite Ben Affleck in David Fincher’s “Gone Girl.” Ratajkowski played Andie Fitzgerald, a student of Nick Dunne’s (Affleck) who is also having an affair with him. She went on to star in films such as “We Are Your Friends” and “I Feel Pretty,” but she hasn’t acted in a movie since 2019’s “Lying and Stealing.”
“I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, I’m an artist performing and this is my outlet,’” Ratajkowski said about quitting her acting career. “I felt like a piece of meat who people were judging, saying, ‘Does she have anything else other than her [breasts]?’”
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After “Gone Girl,” Ratajkowski worked hard with her team to find acting roles that would prove she is a “serious actress with longevity.” She only found supporting roles, but it wasn’t for the lack of trying. She continued to audition for films in the past few years, such as Ruben Östlund’s Cannes winner and Oscar nominee “Triangle of Sadness.” Ratajkowski lost out on the role of Yaya to the late Charlbi Dean.
While navigating being an actor in Hollywood, Ratajkowski said she realized it would mean having to make herself “digestible to powerful men in Hollywood.” She fired her acting agent, commercial representative and manager in early 2020 as a result.
“I didn’t trust them,” Ratajkowski said. “I was like, ‘I can handle receiving phone calls. I’m gonna make these decisions. None of you have my best interest at heart. And you all hate women.’”
An experience Ratajkowski had at a WME party in part turned her off from Hollywood. She attended the event with her husband Sean Bear-McClard, whose “clearly drunk” agent told her she was “like Pamela Anderson before the hep C.”
“I thought about the way that [Bear-McClard] had glided through the room, a room full of men who only two years before had been kissing Harvey Weinstein’s ring and encouraging their young female clients to take meetings with him in hotel rooms,” Ratajkowski writes in an essay from her book, “My Body.” “I hated that my husband was at all connected to these men.”
“Maybe that’s why right now I’m not really interested in men’s POVs,” Ratajkowski told the Los Angeles Times. “Because they were lies. And I don’t mean infidelity. This is a fucked up world. Like, Hollywood is fucked up. And it’s dark… I had a hard time even being at a party like that. But then having a part of me that was so connected to it was even harder.”
Ratajkowski is currently involved in a contentious divorce and custody battle with Bear-McClard, who was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women in a Variety exposé published last month. Bear-McClard, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the allegations at the time.
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