Emily Ratajkowski Torches Movie Business, Reveals Reason She's Quit Acting: 'Hollywood Is F***ed Up'

By Samantha Chang April 10, 2023 at 9:37am

Supermodel Emily Ratajkowski confirmed suspicions that despite the progressive image it promotes, the film industry is predatory and misogynistic.

In an interview published Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times, Ratajkowski said female performers are primarily judged by their looks and sex appeal rather than talent.

“I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, I’m an artist performing and this is my outlet,’” the 31-year-old said.

“I felt like a piece of meat who people were judging, saying, ‘Does she have anything else other than her [breasts]?'” she said.

The objectification Ratajkowski felt whenever she auditioned for a part or attended an industry event is why she gave up acting despite scoring notable roles in the 2014 hit “Gone Girl” opposite Oscar winner Ben Affleck, the 2018 comedy “I Feel Pretty” and the 2019 crime drama “Lying and Stealing,” co-starring British heartthrob Theo James.

The mom of one, who is divorcing film producer Sebastian Bear-McClard after four years of marriage, decided to abandon her five-year stint as an actress because she felt it compelled her to become “digestible to powerful men in Hollywood.”

Ratajkowski, who wanted to evolve into a “serious actress with longevity,” fired her acting agent, commercial rep and manager in early 2020 after getting disgusted by the sordid “power dynamics and the power that is held by boys club” in the movie business.

“I didn’t trust them,” she told the Times of her management team. “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.’”

The outspoken liberal feminist said her traumatic experiences in Hollywood have made her disillusioned and embittered.

Should there be more oversight into what goes on in Hollywood?

“Maybe that’s why right now I’m not really interested in men’s POVs,” she told the Times. “This is a f***ed up world. Like, Hollywood is f***ed up. And it’s dark.”

A major turning point occurred when Ratajkowski attended a movie industry party with her then-husband. The supermodel experienced an epiphany when she realized how close her husband was to other seedy film executives, many of whom had revered disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was convicted of rape and other sex crimes.

“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,” she recounted. “I hated that my husband was at all connected to these men.”

The supermodel is in the middle of a bitter divorce from Bear-McClard, who himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, including two teenage girls.

Sadly, Ratajkowski is not the first person — and will not be the last — to sound the alarm about the predatory, sinister nature of the film industry.

Back in 2011, former child actor Corey Feldman told ABC News that pedophilia was rampant in show business.

“I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was, is, and always will be, pedophilia,” he said. “That’s the biggest problem for children in this industry … It’s the big secret.”

“I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia”. The trauma of pedophilia contributed to death of Corey Haim, Corey Feldman said in an interview with ABC News’ “Nightline” (Aug. 10, 2011)@JackPosobiec @Cernovich pic.twitter.com/UoYdmub63i

— Wojciech Pawelczyk (@WojPawelczyk) July 22, 2018

Feldman continued: “I was surrounded by [pedophiles] when I was 14 years old. … It wasn’t until I was old enough to realize what they were and what they wanted … They were everywhere, like vultures.”

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