I have such mixed feelings about this interview with Catherine Hicks in the 1987 issue of Starlog. At times she says awesome things like this:
There aren’t that many great roles written, and I liked the way they wrote Gillian. This was a good script with intelligence and structure…I was in the mood to play an intellectual. I was due for my dose. I had played doctors, but not yet in the movies. I’m proud of my mind, I’m very well-educated. It’s not a great mind but it’s a quick one.
But then she really wants us to know that slapping her male coworker in that one scene doesn’t make her an “angry feminist” (because of stereotypes that say feminists are always angry and cool with violence against men – not true):
“I didn’t want to use this part to say, ‘This is how angry women can be, and how attached they can be to their work. I don’t want Gillian to come across as an angry feminist marine biologist, and I’m not an angry feminist actress.”
And then a pretty fair observation on the different ways men and women are socialized to express anger and aggression:
“Women have grown up without being physical to each other like guys are. Men grow up fighting in team sports, and they get out a great deal of anger and aggression. I think that’s why women have had bitter tongues for so many centuries. That’s our form of fighting back. Sometimes, you’ve got to get it out of your system, but what are you going to do – go to Jane Fonda’s and do leg lifts? That hardly does it.”
