Lake Bell tackles gender equality in Hollywood: ‘Over half of my team are women’

The US actress has written, directed and star in I Do... Until I Don't 
Turning a corner: Lake Bell is fighting for female equality in Hollywood
Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images for AT&T and Saban Films
Jennifer Ruby7 June 2018
The Weekender

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Actress and filmmaker Lake Bell has said that over half of her department heads are female as Hollywood is on the “foothill of change” in redressing gender inequality in the industry.

The US actress, 39, said that she makes sure she interviews just as many women as men when putting together a crew, for projects including her new feature film I Do… Until I Don’t and the forthcoming TV pilot, Bless This Mess.

“It’s really an exciting time for us. I feel like we are still pretty far from the end point but I feel like we’re on the foothill of change, and that is exciting,” she told the Standard.

“We’ve never been closer. We’re in a space right now and in a climate right now where the conversation of female creators and power players and writers, directors, all of them, even cinematographers, everyone is very aware of it now.”

New project: Lake Bell opposite Ed Helms in I Do... Until I Don't 

Bell, who is on the board of organisation Women in Film, currently has more women than men in senior positions for the pilot of Fox’s single-camera comedy.

“When we’re crewing up and we’re interviewing for every department head, if we’re interviewing three men then we’re interviewing three women who are of equal and deserved consideration,” she said.

“I’d say that more than half of my department heads are female, probably like 75% and that’s just based on merit and who’s good for the job.”

Bell has written, directed and stars in romantic comedy I Do… Before I Don’t, co-starring Amber Heard, Ed Helms and Mary Steenberg, the follow-up to 2013’s In a World.

Bell said the film was a “deeply personal project”, which took her nearly a decade to write and bring to the big screen.

When she started writing, Bell said that she was “cynical” about the concept of marriage, but met and married tattoo artist Scott Campbell mid-way through the project and changed her opinion.

“I started writing this before I met my husband. I wasn’t romantic or pro-marriage, and I was cynical about commitment,” she said.

Campbell proposed to Bell seven months after they started dating and they married in 2013. They have two children, Nova, three, and one-year-old Ozzi.

I Do … Until I Don’t is available to rent and own on digital from 4th June.

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