You likely remember Heather Matarazzo as Mia Thermopolis' cable show-hosting best friend Lilly Moscovitz in The Princess Diaries. Matarazzo has been in the entertainment business for a long time — one of her most famous roles is Welcome to the Dollhouse, which came out in 1996 — and now she has written a resonating blog post about women her field.
In the post, Matarazzo talks about how she and a companion "were discussing women in film, and the lack of opportunities for us at every single level of this industry." She writes: "We spoke of the infighting between women, the scarcity complex that so many of us have. The idea that one can’t rock the boat too much, for fear we might all tip over and drown. Truth be told, I have moments where I feel like I’m drowning. I can sink into the quicksand of self pity and, to borrow from Pixar’s 'Inside Out', the emotion of fear takes over the controls. Then I’m in trouble."
But instead of succumbing to that "fear," Matarazzo explained her decision to issue "gratitude" to a variety of powerhouses acting on behalf of women in the industry. Shonda Rhimes, Jenji Kohan, Amy Schumer, Charlize Theron, and Reese Witherspoon are just some of the women Matarazzo thanks in her essay. Token man Mark Ruffalo also gets a shout out for being someone who "stands right beside us, and proudly calls himself a feminist."
"With you in my corner, I feel hope," she writes as she comes to her conclusion. "I feel hope that things will change, and are changing. I feel hope that I will get more opportunities to play various women who are as complex as I am. I feel hope and less alone. I feel that I am being counted, and count."
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