Sienna Miller talks being 'screamed at,' 'underpaid,' 'undervalued' and 'treated like s***' as a Hollywood actress
If Sienna Miller was able to survive the insane amount of attention paid to her personal life in the aughts, she should be able to get through anything. But it seems that being tabloid fodder and dodging paparazzi were really a small part of the downside of being a Hollywood actress.
Miller appears in Showtime’s mini-series The Loudest Voice about Roger Ailes, playing the Fox News founder’s third wife, Elizabeth Tilson. Ailes, of course, was accused of sexual harassment by women including Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly in 2015 and 2016. He died in 2017, not long after resigning.
“It was really kind of essential to the whole #MeToo, Time’s Up moments,” Miller told PorterEdit magazine of Ailes’s fall from grace. “I was fortunate that I’ve never – of course, we’ve experienced sexual harassment in our lives because we’re women – but I’ve never, within my industry, had that experience,” despite working on some Harvey Weinstein films.
While she escaped sexual harassment, Miller made it clear that she was harassed and mistreated in a different way.
“I’ve been screamed at and underpaid and undervalued and treated like s**t,” she continued, “but no one had ever, luckily, propositioned me in that way, or gone there. But yes, it felt like a moment for women to rise up, if nothing else, for other women.”
Miller, who hailed the #MeToo movement during a U.N. Summit last year, went on to say that since Time’s Up and #MeToo, she’s noticed that her paychecks have increased.
“I recently got paid a significant amount of money for the first time in my entire life for a film that I did,” Miller, who also appears in the new film American Women, told the magazine. “I finally understood how it must have felt to be a man. Not as much, but I actually got paid [more than ever].”
For the Ailes movie, which stars Russell Crowe in the lead role, the British actress admits she had to “watch a lot of Fox News.”
However, she said that she actually did tune in prior — and talked about the allure of the Trump-preferred network.
“You know what? Even before I got this project, I would often flip between the two – CNN and Fox News – if there was something going on, like the Kavanaugh hearings, and you understand completely why that network has so much influence,” Miller said. “They’re speaking with such conviction, like: ‘This is our truth, and we will support it.’ If you spend 20 minutes with Fox, you’re like, ‘Oh, well… maybe…’ And you know it’s total bulls**t.”
As for how she’s coping with her stardom — and the paparazzi — these days, Miller says she tries to “ignore it” and go about her day as a mum to 6-year-old Marlowe, whom she co-parents with ex Tom Sturridge.
She said the attention on her has “calmed down” a decade after her every move with ex Jude Law was tracked. “I wouldn’t say I’m hounded… They exist. It’s frustrating. They know that every morning, at a certain time, I walk my kid to school. Whereas in the past they might be right in front of my face shouting, they’re now hiding behind bins on the other side of the street.”
She continued, “I can somewhat ignore it, but also, I don’t want to get papped at 8:15 in the morning, [when] I refuse to put makeup on or put on an outfit. I really have respect for those women who can dress up for the school run. But I refuse to capitulate, and therefore just end up looking horrendous in the Daily Mail most days, covered in cereal.”
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