Maisie Williams sat down for an interview with The Telegraph this week, and, as with most every piece we read about the actress, it made us fall in love with her a little bit more. The Game of Thrones star has a way with words when it comes to pinpointing the sexism women experience both in and outside of Hollywood. In her interview with the U.K. paper, the 18-year-old expressed why she takes particular issue with the limited, superficial parts available to actresses.
"All the time I'm reading scripts and it's got a couple of sentences about the character and it just says what they look like," Williams said."It's like, 'Candy, 24, hot.' Then you look at the male one, and it says all these things about who he is, like, 'Jason, 25, kind, gentle, good with kids'... I turn down scripts all the time because the characters are not real people. How do you expect to make a good film when all the girls are boring?" Chew on that one, white, male studio execs. "I always want to play people who have a real narrative and purpose," she continued. "I believe that every women should have a real purpose in this world. So why are we still portraying women that don't exist?"
Williams is well aware that the problem extends far beyond screenplays, though. "The way we describe boys is, 'Oh you're so strong, you're so good at sport.' With girls we say, 'Oh you're so pretty, you're so adorable' — and it does limit you... I have so many interesting things that I want to communicate and you're talking about my shoes? That's ridiculous." In particular, Williams gets the "cute" label a lot. "I remember being told I was cute and feeling it was really patronizing — what if I wanted to get muddy and play with the boys? I felt like I was boxed in by this one word."
And that's where the teen's signature feminist ethos comes in. Clearly, Williams hasn't let that feeling stop her from becoming one of the industry's most in-demand actresses. And she wants all women who feel limited by sexism or gender roles to adopt a similarly DGAF attitude. "Every girl should feel like that — that they can take control of their future. I want to inspire people to make those decisions based on what they want to do — not what they think they should do." Mission accomplished, Maisie.
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