As if you needed further proof, but Jacki Weaver is killing it right now. After first coming to Stateside prominence as the Oscar-nominated sociopathic matriarch at the top of the Animal Kingdom food chain, Weaver has gone on to land a variety of roles as everything from an over-bearing mother-in-law in rom-com The Five Year Engagement [interview here], to creepy aunt in Park Chan-wook’s awesomely terrifying Stoker, and now she’s generating more Oscar buzz with her turn as Bradley Cooper’s sweet Philly mom in Silver Linings Playbook. During an interview for the latter with New York Magazine, Weaver has called out Hollywood on its deeply-entrenched slut-shaming tendencies in a move Jezebel has labelled “glorious”, saying:
Sexism is alive and well! We were saying this forty years ago. I’m an optimist, so I like to think we’ve progressed in some ways – in Australia, we get equal pay. But yeah, it’s disappointing to think that still goes on. Do you think Kristen Stewart got into trouble because Robert Pattinson was so loved? I remember I was a little girl when Elizabeth Taylor stole Eddie Fisher from America’s Sweetheart, Debbie Reynolds, and the reaction back then was enormous! And Angelina Jolie was in trouble, too, for taking a husband away from another America’s Sweetheart. Don’t take husbands from America’s Sweethearts.
Also interesting, Weaver believes in sex on the first date (“Otherwise, how do you know if a second date is worth the effort?“), she’d be up for an Animal Kingdom sequel if it meant she could play opposite most of the antipodean power players in the film industry, including Russell Crowe, Geoffrey Rush, Jack Thompson and Hugh Jackman, and November 12th marked Weaver’s 50th year as an actor, during which time Weaver says she has gone from having “no bum and all tits [to] no tits and all bum!” Bless.
Read the full interview here.
Silver Linings Playbook will be released in Australia on January 31st, 2013. Here she is with the cast and crew – is she not the most adorable?
Photos by Terry Rice and Jason Meritt via Getty
