Amanda Seyfried has opened up about the pressure she felt to ‘walk around without her underwear on’ when she began her film career as a teenager.
Now 36, Seyfried was just 19 when she appeared in Mean Girls. In a recent interview, she discussed how she navigated the pre-#MeToo era ‘pretty unscathed,’ but also reflected on some of the uncomfortable situations she encountered.
“Being 19, walking around without my underwear on – like, are you kidding me? How did I let that happen?” she said.
In her conversation with Porter, Seyfried explained: “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.”
She also expressed that in ‘some ways’, she wishes her career was starting now, benefiting from the presence of intimacy coordinators on set and a greater ease for actors to ‘speak up’.
Seyfried, who was promoting The Dropout, where she plays tech company founder Elizabeth Holmes, discussed how Holmes was convicted of criminal fraud for misleading investors about Theranos’s blood-testing technology.
In May, Seyfried spoke to Marie Claire about her role as Holmes and revisited the challenges of her early career.
Fans might recall that in Mean Girls, Seyfried’s character Karen Smith predicts the weather by holding her breasts, a trait Seyfried now finds ‘gross’ in hindsight.
“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 her interview, SAG-AFTRA’s national board approved a path to membership for intimacy coordinators.
Fran Drescher, the union’s president, made a statement in July: “The role of intimacy coordinators greatly improves safety and well-being on sets and in productions requiring intimate scenes.”
Drescher further stated: “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, this did not prevent white male actor Sean Bean from criticizing the role of intimacy coordinators, calling them ‘inhibiting’ during an interview with The Times this month.
Bean remarked: “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.”