Cate Blanchett delivers blunt verdict on #MeToo in Hollywood: 'It got killed very quickly'

At the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, actor Cate Blanchett offered a stark reflection on the current state of gender equality in Hollywood, arguing that the momentum of the #MeToo movement has weakened significantly in recent years.

Speaking during a wide-ranging onstage conversation, Blanchett said the cultural shift sparked by #MeToo, which began in 2017 as a global reckoning over sexual harassment and abuse in workplaces, particularly in the entertainment industry, had not brought the required change that everyone hoped for.

“It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting,” she said, suggesting that while the movement initially opened up space for survivors to speak, its broader impact has since been diluted in the industry.

Her comments revisited the core promise of #MeToo: amplifying voices of those who experienced harassment or abuse and challenging entrenched power structures in workplaces. In Hollywood especially, the movement led to high-profile allegations, industry-wide investigations, and the downfall of several powerful figures. But Blanchett implied that the systemic change has not matched the early surge of accountability.

“There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me,” she said. “And the so-called average woman on the street, person on the street, is saying MeToo. Why does that get shut down?”

Blanchett has long been vocal about gender imbalance in the film industry. In 2018, when she served as president of the Cannes jury, she joined a red-carpet protest alongside 81 other women. The demonstration highlighted the stark disparity in representation: only 82 female directors had ever been selected for Cannes’ main competition at the time, compared to 1,866 male directors.

Reflecting on the present-day film sets she continues to work on, Blanchett said inequality remains visible in everyday production environments.

“I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning,” she said.

While she emphasised that she has no issue with working with men, she pointed to the creative and cultural stagnation that can come from lack of diversity.

“I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same,” she said. “You just have to brace yourself slightly, and I’m used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace.”

The #MeToo movement is a global social campaign against sexual harassment and sexual violence, particularly in workplaces and institutions where power imbalances can make abuse harder to report.

The phrase 'Me Too' was first coined in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke, who used it to support survivors of sexual violence, especially women and girls from marginalised communities. The idea was powerful: to create solidarity by letting survivors know they were not alone.

The movement exploded into mainstream global awareness in 2017, when allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein led to a wave of public accusations against powerful figures across the entertainment industry, politics, media, and business. The hashtag #MeToo went viral after actress Alyssa Milano encouraged people to use it on social media to show the scale of the problem.

Within weeks, millions of people worldwide shared personal experiences of harassment or assault, making it one of the largest collective disclosures of sexual misconduc. The impact was immediate and also spread to Bollywood a year later: High-profile men were investigated, fired, or resigned, and companies introduced or strengthened workplace harassment policies.

In Hollywood specifically, #MeToo changed conversations around consent, power dynamics, and accountability. It led to industry-wide reckonings, including changes in hiring practices, intimacy coordination on sets, and increased scrutiny of misconduct allegations.

With inputs from Associated Press