Sarah Jessica Parker has been in the business for a long time, and has her extensive filmography to prove it. But there came a time when Parker was more than disappointed by the types of movies that were being produced by Hollywood.
Sarah Jessica Parker didn’t feel people responded to her as a movie star
Even in the earlier days of her career, Parker didn’t see herself becoming a movie star. The Sex and the City star once asserted that she was more drawn to the craft of acting than the glamour. Which meant Parker was only interested in putting out projects that were meaningful, regardless of its popularity.
“I think my motivation is to do good work that matters more to me at the end of the day than anything, of course. But I think I’ve been working for so many years that I don’t see myself having that accelerated, meteoric career, that happens so overnight and crazy,” she once said in an interview with Charlie Rose.
Parker saw herself as a working actor always in the process of building her career. Because of that, she doubted that audiences would’ve been able to recognize her as a big movie star.
“I don’t see that people would respond to me that way,” Parker continued. “I don’t feel myself seeking that.”
Parker at the time was more concerned by the respect of her peers and the work she put in instead of movie stardom.
Sarah Jessica Parker once slammed Hollywood for not making more adult films
There was a time when Parker may have become dissatisfied with the types of movies that Hollywood was putting out. According to Contact Music, the successful megastar felt that there were less movies for adult audiences. Instead, she believed Hollywood was catering to teenagers “wanting to see movies for knuckleheads.”
Parker asserted this was a stark and troubling difference from an earlier era in Hollywood.
“I remember when adults went to movies. Until about five years ago there were always adult films and they made their money back. It wasn’t such a risk. So I feel I have to compete against audience’s tastes,” she once explained.
Sarah Jessica Parker started a production company devoted to producing more interesting films for women
Parker has been opening up more opportunities for others in the film industry with her film company Pretty Matches. She’s also used Pretty Matches to find unique projects for herself such as the TV series Divorce. The idea behind Pretty Matches was to find or create the types of fascinating stories she felt Hollywood was lacking in. Especially when it came to actors who were women.
“What we’re hoping to do is to tell whole stories, stories about everybody. But we are keenly interested in the woman’s points of view in the story. We try to look after her and how her story is being told. We’re trying to find the stories that haven’t been told, that should be told, and that are marginalized or overlooked,” Parker once said according to Bust.
In recent years, production companies have been springing up with similar goals as Parker’s Pretty Matches. It was a shift in Hollywood that she enjoyed seeing and being a contributor of.
“We’ve always wanted women in front of, and behind, the camera and continue to pursue that idea and I know that we’re not alone in that and we’re not singular,” she said in a 2018 interview with Forbes. “That’s the way we conducted business for quite a while, so it’s nice to see that that is more and more so the way other companies are imagining their life as producers. I tell you the thing that’s really interesting is that it’s hard now to book a lot of the female writers and directors because they’re booked, you can’t get anybody now. It’s fascinating.”
