Summary of this article
Australian actor Cate Blanchett, at the Cannes film festival, lamented that the #MeToo movement “got killed very quickly” in Hollywood.
Blanchett, who advocates gender equality, said that there are still ‘10 women and 75 men’ on film sets.
In 2018, when the Oscar-winning star was president of the jury in Cannes, she took part in a red-carpet protest.
Actor Cate Blanchett, on Sunday, joined for a talk with Cannes moderator Didier Allouch at the 2026 edition of the Cannes film festival, where she reflected on the #MeToo movement in Hollywood, lamenting that it “got killed very quickly.”
Cate Blanchett on #MeToo in Hollywood
Blanchett said, “It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting,” and asked, “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?”
“What [the 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.”
Blanchett on Hollywood gender disparity
Blanchett, 57, noted that the gender inequality in the film industry still exists even today.
“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,” the two-time Oscar winner said. “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. I think it has an effect on the work.”
For the unversed, Blanchett served as Cannes jury president in 2018 when #MeToo was at its peak, leading a women’s march alongside Kristen Stewart, Léa Seydoux, Ava DuVernay, Agnès Varda and others.
