Chivalry, review: Steve Coogan stars as sleazeball in smart satire on Hollywood and sexual politics
Steve Coogan is very good at playing a middle-aged man nervously navigating the new “woke” landscape while desperate to sleep with women half his age. In Chivalry…
Roar author Cecelia Ahern on why her stories aren’t trying to start a gender war
It also means that Roar has an effective lightness of touch; it’s startling and inventive, not po-faced or scolding. Was that deliberate? “Well, it’s generally my tone…
I wish my 13-year-old self could have read this guide to sex
If I remember my sex education correctly, sex is when a sperm faceplants an egg, and nine months later, a baby turns up. After this revelation, my…
Kathy Valentine on life with The Go-Go’s: ‘My addiction stopped me feeling like a sad mess’
That makes sense, I say. But looking at the incident with the 14-year-old older brother of a friend, who took her virginity when she was 12 –…
What would Marilyn say? Why Ana de Armas’s Blonde is already the year’s most controversial film
So what might they? Dominik has been combative about the film’s mature, “demanding” nature, telling Screen: “It’s controversial, there’s a bit for [Netflix] to swallow,” Dominik has…
Julie Newmar, the original Catwoman: ‘MeToo? Men are men and women are women’
When it comes to assessing the other actresses who have played Catwoman, the role that she pioneered in the 1960s Batman TV series, Julie Newmar keeps to…
‘I’ve been mistaken for a groupie’: how the music industry is still failing women
Lizzy Ellis is making similar progress with music tech programme Saffron Music. After discovering that women, non-binary and trans people occupy less than five per cent of…
The depressing creative decline of Woody Allen
I come not to praise Woody Allen’s latest film, but to… wait, it has buried itself, you say? The director’s 49th feature, Rifkin’s Festival, just trickled out…
Ai Weiwei: ‘It’s obvious Covid is not a natural disease, it’s something that leaked out’
Then, in 2011, Ai was detained for 81 days without charge; he was interrogated daily. In the lavatory, he had to ask the guards’ permission before he…
‘I was sexually assaulted by an NHS co-worker – it’s time for healthcare’s MeToo moment’
It happened when I was a junior doctor in my 20s, working in one of the largest NHS trusts in England. Over a number of months, a…
How ‘dwarfist’ Snow White became Disney’s most problematic princess
The brothers did not invent the Snow White story. Variations on the tale have been traced as far afield as Scandinavia and Turkey – and most are…
Stacey Dooley: Stalkers, review: an important subject – but unduly hogged by its celebrity presenter
In this newspaper a couple of weeks ago, the presenter Louise Minchin recounted her horrific stalking ordeal. She described the “blood-chilling” discovery that this man knew where…
Joss Whedon forgot the first rule of the ‘damage control’ interview – just shut up
He shared some regrets around how he spoke to Carpenter after learning she was pregnant. “I was not mannerly,” he said. But he refuted her claims. “Most…
Ronnie Spector in 2019: ‘MeToo is now, but I’ve been living it my whole life’
All those years I went through hell only made me stronger,” says Ronnie Spector. The lead singer of The Ronettes, who lived through a frightening, controlling marriage…
Rules of the Game, review: plenty of fun – and a furiously vaping Maxine Peake – in this mad MeToo thriller
A colleague described Rules of the Game as “HR noir”, and I can’t top that. It is billed as “a workplace drama inspired by the Harvey Weinstein…
Elizabeth McGovern: my daughters helped me understand sexism in Hollywood
Aged 19, in 1980, before she’d even graduated from New York’s Juilliard School, McGovern was cast in Ordinary People, directed by Robert Redford, which she views as…
Elizabeth McGovern: my daughters helped me understand sexism in Hollywood
Aged 19, in 1980, before she’d even graduated from New York’s Juilliard School, McGovern was cast in Ordinary People, directed by Robert Redford, which she views as…
My encounter with the ‘Dirty Duchess’
I only once met Marg of Arg, as Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, was known in those days, when I interviewed her for the Sunday Express in l986,…
Max Stafford-Clark’s MeToo mea culpa: how a giant of British theatre was brought crashing to earth
Not helping matters is the fact that his stroke seems, for some, to be a convenient smoke-screen. In 2017, the actress Tracy-Ann Oberman wrote in The Guardian…
Maggie Gyllenhaal interview: ‘Sex scenes? I’m kind of an expert’
Ferrante did read over the script, but gave only limited feedback. She gave her blessing for Gyllenhaal to change the story’s ending, though – albeit in ways…