Rose McGowan: “I got really tired of being sexualized”

On being sexualized in Hollywood:

“I just grew up with not just an appreciation, but the desire to break down the study of film. Okay Rose, let’s study the Lumiere Brothers, who invented the moving camera. Let’s now study and focus on this. So when I was discovered for acting I thought, oh, this must be what I’m meant to do. But I was never comfortable in the role of basically being voiceless. I worked with some seriously misogynistic directors. And people get a pass because they’re directors — but you don’t get a pass for being a bad person, you just don’t. I don’t think any job. There was a moment, I was on the cover of Rolling Stone, with a fake tan and gun belt around me and breasts, they gave me some big bouffant hair and glossy lips, and I just was like, I’ve had it, I have just had it. I’m like sick of being sexualized, I’m sick of this. So I just checked out and I ran around and I had the most fabulous time. I figured out finally what was wrong. It was not that I wasn’t meant to be an actress, it was just that I was meant to be in film, and I just was literally cast in the wrong role in life. And I’m good at acting, I like exploring different worlds and I like disappearing, but I spent 15 years disappearing into other people’s bodies, into other people’s minds, other people’s clothes, eating what other people would eat. It wasn’t that I didn’t have amazing moments or got to do amazing things, absolutely. I’m an artist, but I never felt like I was an artist as an actor. Not because of how I was treated, because that’s not how artists are treated, or should be treated, or people should be treated.”

… says 41 year-old Rose while posing topless for Flatt Magazine – see the spread here!

Rose on the red carpet at the 1998 MTV Music Awards: