Marion Cotillard: Feminism has no place in film world

Should the film industry adopt quotas to boost the number of female directors? No way, says actress Marion Cotillard.

87th Annual Academy Awards - Arrivals

Marion Cotillard the French actress, has warned that quotas for female directors in cinema would create division within the industry.

“Film-making is not about gender. You cannot ask a president in a film festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men,” said Cotillard, who is starring as Lady Macbeth alongside Michael Fassbender in Justin Kurzel’s film adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy.

“For me, it doesn’t create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I don’t qualify myself as a feminist. We need to fight for women’s rights, but I don’t want to separate women from men. We’re separated already because we’re not made the same and it’s the difference that creates this energy in creation and love.

“Sometimes in the word ‘feminism’ there’s too much separation,” she told Porter magazine.

Gender-based quotas were proposed by a panel at Cannes last year to boost the representation of women in the film industry.

Cotillard, who has starred in hit films such as Inception and La Vie en Rose, also said she has had to try harder not to bring her work home with her since the birth of her first child, a son, in 2011.

“For me, [there are] questions about how you can be two persons at the same time, when you have to be in character and at the same time be mum.

She added that she never regretted turning down films when it allowed her to spend more time with her family.

“I want to spend time with my kid. Because, well, it’s easier when you have a family and that’s the priority.”

The actress said that she experienced her first panic attacks while filming Macbeth and only recognised them because she had once played a character who suffered from them.

“Actually, when I start a movie, I usually freak out,” she said. “This time, it was pretty physical and intense. Panic attacks. I never had panic attacks before. What is funny is I didn’t know what a panic attack was, but I had studied it for the role I did before [in Two Days, One Night]. “So when [I had one] I knew exactly what it was and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Am I having a panic attack?’ But I just had to accept that I would freak out the whole shoot long.”

The Times