The Bafta-nominated writer of the movies Girl With A Pearl Earring and Wuthering Heights has said it is harder to get modern women on screen because there is “so much resistance to central female characters”.
Olivia Hetreed, president of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, said studios and producers are reluctant to take a risk on a film or TV drama with women in lead roles unless it is a historical figure or a literary adaptation.
Hetreed’s 2003 adaptation of Tracy Chevalier’s best-selling novel Girl With A Pearl Earring starred Scarlett Johansson opposite Colin Firth as the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Her 2011 version of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights had Kaya Scodelario as Catherine Earnshaw.
The screenwriter said she was drawn to adaptations because of the “rich world” created by the original authors and it was also a way of “sneaking” in lead female characters. She added: “It’s amazing how strong the prejudice still is to central female characters...it’s a huge problem getting independent films funded anyway so an adaptation has an advantage, to a moderate extent. Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary are seen as less of a risk. A man can just be an astronaut, but a woman astronaut has to represent all femaleness.”
She will be one of the speakers at this year’s London Writers’ Week, which is being held at Central Saint Martins from July 4.
Read More
MORE ABOUT