Emily Ratajkowski Quit Acting, Fired Her Team Who ‘All Hate Women’: ‘Hollywood Is F***ed Up’

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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Emily Ratajkowski has officially exited Hollywood.

The “Gone Girl” actress revealed that following her audition for Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winning satire “Triangle of Sadness,” she opted to step away from the film industry as a whole. Lifelong model Ratajkowski got her start onscreen with a two-episode stint on “iCarly” before going on to star in films like “We Are Your Friends,” “Lying and Stealing,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Easy.”

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“But I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, I’m an artist performing and this is my outlet,'” Ratajkowski told the Los Angeles Times. “I felt like a piece of meat who people were judging, saying, ‘Does she have anything else other than her [breasts]?'”

Her last audition was for “Triangle of Sadness” before Charlbi Dean Kriek was cast; the model-actress died suddenly shortly following the film’s release.

Ratajkowski shared that following her first major film role in 2014’s “Gone Girl,” her team tried to land her roles that proved she was a “serious actress with longevity.” That is, until Ratajkowski fired her acting agent, commercial rep, and manager in early 2020 after being tired of making herself “digestible to powerful men in Hollywood.”

“I didn’t trust them,” she said. “I was like, ‘I can handle receiving phone calls. I’m going to make these decisions. None of you have my best interest at heart. And you all hate women.'”

The “My Body” author added that she is less inclined to be beholden to “power dynamics and the power that is held by boys clubs.”

Ratajkowski remembered a particularly tense moment where her ex-husband Sebastian Bear-McClard’s WME agent, while “clearly drunk,” compared her to “Pamela Anderson before the hep C.”

Bear-McClard, a frequent Safdie brothers collaborator with whom Ratajkowski shares a son, was recently accused of sexual misconduct, assault, and grooming underage women on the sets of “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems.”

“I thought about the way that [Bear-McClard] had glided through the room, a room full of men who only two years before had been kissing Harvey Weinstein’s ring and encouraging their young female clients to take meetings with him in hotel rooms,” Ratajkowski wrote in her 2021 memoir. “I hated that my husband was at all connected to these men.”

Now, she told the Los Angeles Times, “And maybe that’s why right now I’m not really interested in men’s POVs. Because they were lies. And I don’t mean infidelity. This is a fucked up world. Like, Hollywood is fucked up. And it’s dark.”

She added of her current ongoing custody battle and divorce agreement, “We all know that the court system is really sexist. And I’m scared. I’m learning that outspoken women don’t often get their children…The world is pretty brutal to women, no matter what they look like.”

Ratajkowski added, “I hate the idea that because, like, Sydney Sweeney posts sexy pictures and has a bikini line that she is somehow hurting women. Can we stop blaming Sydney Sweeney? Or the woman who had an affair with [Maroon 5 frontman] Adam Levine who everyone was so mad at instead of him? When the power dynamic in the world is so skewed, why are we putting all this weight on women?”

The former actress summed up, “It feels beautiful, like I’ve awoken. It’s kind of like the archetype of Pygmalion, the classic story of the mannequin or statue coming alive. There’s something that’s been created in a man’s perfect image, and then it takes on its own life. I feel like I’m coming into myself. Being able to assert what I want — that feels like it just started. My life as a creator and not as a muse.”

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