Amanda Seyfried has spoken candidly about feeling pressure to ‘walk around without her underwear on’ when she first started making movies
Amanda Seyfried has spoken candidly about feeling pressure to ‘walk around without her underwear on’ when she first started making movies as a teen.
Seyfried, now 36, was just 19 when she starred in Mean Girls. While the star admitted in a new interview she emerged from the pre-#MeToo era ‘pretty unscathed’, Seyfried did reflect on some of the uncomfortable positions she’d been put in.
“Being 19, walking around without my underwear on – like, are you kidding me? How did I let that happen?” she said.
Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
Speaking to Porter, Seyfried added: “Oh, I know why: I was 19 and I didn’t want to upset anybody, and I wanted to keep my job. That’s why.”
Seyfried also told the magazine that in ‘some ways’, she wishes her career was starting out now, where intimacy coordinators are present on set and it’s easier for actors to ‘speak up’.
The Oscar-nominated star was doing the press rounds for The Dropout, in which she stars as tech company founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Holmes was convicted of criminal fraud after tricking investors into thinking her company Theranos could use a fake blood test to revolutionise the diagnosis of diseases.
Back in May, Seyfried also spoke about playing Holmes to Marie Claire, and once again touched upon her uncomfortable start in the industry.
You might remember that in 2004’s Mean Girls, Seyfried’s character Karen Smith could predict the weather by holding her breasts, a character trait Seyfried said in hindsight she finds ‘gross’.
TCD/Prod.DB / Alamy Stock Photo
“I always felt really grossed out by that. I was like 18 years old. It was just gross,” she told the magazine.
Two months after Seyfried’s interview, SAG-AFTRA’s national board approved a path to membership for intimacy coordinators.
Fran Drescher, the union’s president, said in a statement in July: “The role of intimacy coordinators greatly improves safety and well-being on sets and in productions requiring intimate scenes.”
Drescher added: “Their value is immeasurable and the National Board is committed to bringing intimacy coordinators into the SAG-AFTRA family and ensuring they have the kind of benefits and protections other members already enjoy.”
However, that didn’t stop white male actor Sean Bean from saying intimacy coordinators can be ‘inhibiting’ when speaking to The Times this month.
Bean said: “I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise. It would inhibit me more because it’s drawing attention to things.”