Speaking during The Hollywood Reporter’s annual actress roundtable discussion, Helen pulled no punches when it came to the ongoing issue of gender inequality in the industry.
“We’ve got to stop being polite. If I ever had children, which I don’t, the first thing I’d teach a girl of mine is the words f**k off,” says The Queen star, who was joined by seven other leading stars, including Cate Blanchett.
Helen, 70, says she was inspired to speak out by an essay on the issue by fellow roundtable actress, Hunger Games hero Jennifer Lawrence.
“It’s driven me crazy in my career to watch wonderful actresses — wonderful, brilliant actresses, my contemporaries when I was younger — really their careers kind of diminish and disappear and mediocre actors carry on.”
She argues that there is no difference in many roles as far as whether they should be male or female.
“All this crap about, ‘I can’t write roles for women, I don’t understand them’. It’s like, you don’t have to.”
Helen laments that there are always male roles she wants to play.
“I’m so annoyed when I watch movies and go, ‘that could have been played by a woman, and that could have been played by a woman! There’s nothing to stop that being played by a woman’.”
Cate believes that workplace inequality is rife across all industries.
“We’re at the pointy and probably the most public end, but in what industry do women receive equal pay for equal work? I can’t think of any,” she says.
But one part Helen says she’s happy to let her male counterpart have is the one requiring a character to get naked.
Earlier this year she made headlines for declaring that her on-screen nudity days are over at the age of 70.
“That’s the good thing about getting older,” she said in September.
“You don’t have to do that sort of thing any more. . . . [Now] my pleasure pillows are purely for my husband.”
