Julie Delpy on the downside of being a 'very pretty' young actress: 'I was constantly under attack'
Julie Delpy, the actress and singer perhaps best known for her starring roles in Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, says she's no longer pretty. And she doesn't miss her looks at all.
"For me, I was very pretty but I was hating it," she told Page Six in an interview published Thursday. "I was hating it because it was relentless. I was constantly under attack ... I had to protect myself intellectually because I was reading a lot, I was extremely educated, in a certain way, in arts, literature, and I was not really treated as such."
Delpy, who was born in Paris, studied filmmaking at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She began acting even before that, when she was only 14, after filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard cast her in his 1984 film Detective.
In August 2012, she told The New Yorker that she was uncomfortable with her looks early in her career.
"When I became an actress, suddenly I realized that men have a tendency to objectify women, and pretty women: They kind of want to control them, have their power over them," she told the magazine.
Now 51, she recalled being hit on constantly in her younger years. She's said that she avoided since disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein — she had heard about him — but others whose advances she turned down spread the word that she was difficult.
"Being a pretty girl but strong, but tough, but clear about where I was standing, was not an easy task," she said.
Delpy, who is now a writer, producer and director, in addition to her acting, said she no longer has that challenge.
"I'm not the pretty girl when I walk in the office and they're like, you're so cute, do you want to go for dinner?," Delpy said. "No, it doesn't work like that anymore."
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