Jessica Chastain thinks there needs to be an effort made to understand why men sexually harass and assault women.
The 40-year-old actress has been very outspoken following numerous sexual misconduct allegations made against the likes of now disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, but as more and more women come forward with allegations, Chastain believes the focus needs to be on the abusers as well as the victims.
Speaking to The Guardian newspaper, Chastain said: "I really wish that focus would be on men. I think there’s a lot of focus on women, and I’m so happy that Time magazine’s Person of the Year was the #MeToo movement. But when you’re talking about statistics, and they say, this percentage of women are sexually harassed or raped, they don’t actually put those percentages for men – this percentage of men sexually harass. I think we need to take that focus of victimisation off of the victims and actually look at the problem. Where does it stem from?"
During this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Jessica – who was a member of the jury – blasted the "disturbing" representation of women in film.
In an emotional speech, she said: "I do believe that if you have female storytelling you also have more authentic female characters. This is the first time I watched 20 films in 10 days, and I love movies. The one thing I really took away from this experience is how the world views women, from the female characters that were represented. It was quite disturbing to me, to be honest. There were some exceptions, I will say, [but] for the most part, I was surprised by the representation of female characters on screen in these films."
Chastain has now admitted she didn’t go to Cannes with the intention to make such a powerful statement but nervously took the opportunity once she was on the jury.
She said: "I did not expect to say it. I was very nervous as I was talking, because I was formulating my words, and it was actually coming from a very true place. And then after I spoke, every other woman on the jury spoke to the same thing. The one big regret, from whatever came out of Cannes, was that their statements did not also go around. But yes, I was not alone in what I felt being on that jury."
Jessica Chastain wants to get to the problem of sexual assault and rape
