Hollywood actress-director Maggie Gyllenhaal has made it very clear that she isn't "interested" in making films about "strong female characters". ‘The Bride’ director is keen to explore the many sides of women and the "whole spectrum" of their emotions, reports ‘Female First UK’.
She said that she wants to do this in order to give female audiences characters they can relate to because everyone is flawed. Speaking at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, she said, quoted by ‘Variety’, “I’m not really that interested in ‘strong female characters’.
I’m interested in a depiction of women that I can recognise as something that has to do with my own experience, which usually includes some strength, some terrible weakness, some beautiful weakness and vulnerability, some pleasure, some terror, the whole spectrum”.
Maggie doesn't believe she is breaking taboos with her work but can understand why it seems that way because there are relatively few films made by women compared with the work of male directors. She said, “For most of the time that people have been making movies, they have been made by men.
There have been some fascinating female characters (created by male filmmakers but) I think if you’re living a very different experience fundamentally as a male filmmaker. I don’t see how you have insight into all of a feminine experience, especially the parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of, that we hide that we don’t like to share”.
Asked if she is trying to break down barriers, she added, “No, I’m just trying to make space for my own experience to be expressed, to make space for (The Bride’s) Jessie Buckley’s experience to be expressed, to make space for my production designer’s experience to be expressed.
It’s not that I’m interested in (breaking) taboos, I think it just comes off that way because there’s been so few [women] making movies, and so it seems like these things are off-limits. It’s just they haven’t been explored. And I did not expect to make people so angry by exploring them”.
As per ‘Female First UK’, the 48-year-old star is always open to ideas from her cast because she often felt directors weren't interested in her interpretations and her "art" when she was acting. She said, “Part of the reason why I moved into being a writer and a director is because I found that many directors were not interested in my art, my expression if it looked different than what they imagined when they were home in their room.
I got very good at figuring out ways to protect the little bit of real estate around me. But then I got tired of having to like do that dance, and I thought I need more space. Not only do I want the freedom to express myself, I want to offer that freedom to other artistes”.