'We Have To Play The Game:' A Hollywood Wake Up Call For Olivia Wilde

We all know Olivia Wilde as the actress that starred in movies like “House,” “Thirteen,” “In Time,” “TRON: Legacy,” “The Lazarus Effect,” “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” and many others— however, this blue-eyed beauty wasn’t introduced to the Hollywood life through acting.

When Wilde decided to take up the acting route, she moved to LA and got one of her first positions in Hollywood at a casting agency under Mali Finn.

This job accorded her the perfect position to see just what kind of life she was getting into and helped her pick up the dos and don’ts when going for an audition.

For Wilde, the goal had always been an acting career, but the position in a casting agency served the purpose of giving her a stronger hold and gearing her up for the actual audition.

Wilde’s first job at a casting agency gave her invaluable insight into the workings of auditions. In an interview with The Off Camera Show late last year, she spoke about being given this advice by a parent’s friend who was also a film producer.

The advice stated that she should follow this route before going headlong into the world of acting and auditions in order for her to really know what she was getting into before she committed fully.

During another interview with Vogue, Wilde said how crucial the job was in learning how to play the ‘game’ in Hollywood.

She was the one behind the camera with the clipboаrd who took notes for her boss, a casting director named Mila Finn who, after everyone had gone, would lean back and ask her opinion about the things that went on that day.

According to Wilde, Finn made the realities of what she was going into quite clear to her and the treatment of women in Hollywood by directors and how it’s “all about sex.”

Wilde divulged more of her conversation with the Hollywood casting agent in her The Off Camera Show interview when she said, “So Finn did mаke it cleаr the realities of whаt I wаs walking into. The director, for them, it’s аll going to be first and foremost at your age ‘I was 18,’ about sex. Thаt’s whаt they’re thinking of. Then you have to offer something more.”

“And I was like ‘Whаt? This is terrible. Whаt do you meаn by this?’ And she’s just like this smаrt womаn, this feminist, аnd she wаs just very blunt аbout whаt the mаjority of directors would expect from me,”

“She wаs аlso deаling with аn Eаst Coаst boаrding school grаduаte who wore а lot of brown corduroy suits to work, and I think she was trying to help me out.”

Wilde’s position in the casting agency accorded her the knowledge of how auditions work and just how superficial Hollywood can be.

She showed how during The Off Camera Show interview, when she recounted her first audition. On her way to an audition wearing a casual wool turtleneck blouse, she was stopped by Mali, who asked, “Whoa, that’s what you’re wearing to the audition?”

When Wilde affirmed that that was indeed what she was wearing, Mali said, “No, you need to go, go change and wear something that shows a little bit of your skin.”

Now Wilde knows Mali as a really strong feminist, so you can imagine the shock when she realized just how shallow Hollywood can be. She said she struggled with it, but she just had to accept that this was her work environment, and she had to participate in the game in order to achieve her superstar dreams.

Sadly, this is just one in many instances where actresses have been told to look sexy or show more skin to get a role.

This unfair method of holding a woman’s sexual allure over her talent and ambition has continued to thrive without any obvious means of countering it.

Female characters in movies are more likely to be objectified, highlighting their sexuality, thereby putting out harmful stereotypes compared to their male counterparts.

They serve as glaring reminders of the power of the media in shaping just how women are seen due to the constant sexualization and marginalization.