Lady Gaga has said that sexual harassment was to be expected in recording studios when she started her career.
Ahead of the Oscars race, Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born), Nicole Kidman (Destroyer), Glenn Close (The Wife), Kathryn Hahn (A Private Life), Regina King (If Beale St Could Talk) and Rachel Weisz (The Favourite) all chatted about women in Hollywood, the craft of acting, exciting roles and what it's like to be playing great women during a surge of feminist movements.
We can recommend reading the whole thing on The Hollywood Reporter, not only because the magazine managed to get those six powerhouses in one room together, and into a photoshoot where limbs are entwined enough for it not to be a photoshop job, but because everyone says some smart stuff.
Gaga's stuff is very interesting, though. A relative newcomer to acting, she holds her own in a room full of heavyweight Hollywood types - isn’t it nice to see women over 40 celebrated like this? - and begun with a comment on changing attitudes towards sexual assault in the music industry
‘It was the rule, not the exception, that you would walk into a recording studio and be harassed. It was just the way that it was. So I do wish that I had spoken up sooner. I did speak up about it. I was assaulted when I was young, and I told people.
‘And, you know, there was a "boys club." Nobody wants to lose their power, so they don't protect you because if they say something, it takes some of their power away.’
Gaga is also eager to see that sexual assault and the gender pay gap are given equal billing when it comes to the fight against inequality: ‘What I hope is that these conversations come together — that it's not just about equal pay on one side … or equal billing over here … and then assault on this side. But that it all comes together and that this movement is all of those things.’
When it comes to acting, Gaga says it’s far deeper than what she does as her ‘character’ Lady Gaga, ‘When I'm onstage performing and doing music, I have the audience. It's like this adrenaline rush, and I'm talking to people and shouting at them. [But when you are acting] there is no way that you're not going to the depths of who you are, into a very scary place.
‘I just have to commend each and every one of you for it. Because I still feel like I am recovering from playing this role.’
If Gaga makes it to the Oscars, it won't be her first time, and it's also not her first time using her creative platform to address issues of sexual harassment - in 2016, her song ’Til It Happens To You, co-written with Diane Warren, got an Oscar nomination when it soundtracked campus rape documentary The Hunting Ground, and was performed at the 2016 ceremony. She lost out then to Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes' Bond song Writing's On The Wall, but there's hope she might grab Best Actress this time round, or Best Song for Shallow.
The connection between creativity - like Gaga’s song - and an upheaval in social attitudes towards, say, speaking out against sexual assault, was highlighted by Rachel Weisz, who wondered what happened first, ‘Is [the exposure of] sexual harassment connected to how we are getting our stories told now? I can't figure out the chicken and the egg.’
Glenn Close also described how, when she was younger, she ‘froze’ when a ‘very famous, very big actor’ put his hand on her knee during an audition, even though ‘it had nothing to do with the character.’
Other topics explored include kids and having it all, with Nicole Kidman divulging that her theatre stint in London made her cry because she missed her kids’ bedtimes, and ideal roles - Regina King’s got her eyes on Joan of Arc one day, while Kathryn Hahn decided, of all the characters she’s played, she’d most like to hang out with her rabbi character in Transparent. To which Gaga retorted ‘Just because I've only been in one movie, doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to meet Ally! OK?