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Leighton Meester is married to fellow cult teen TV series star Adam Brody, and the couple share a one-year-old daughter, Arlo.
If you didn’t know that, don’t beat yourself up too much. The former Gossip Girl actress is private about her personal life, rarely speaking about Brody or their daughter. And as the 30-year-old revealed in a new interview with Refinery29, it’s out of concern about being typecast as a mother in Hollywood.
“I don’t talk about Arlo very much. I am very proud of that area of my life,” she told the website. “But I’m also really proud of the show, and of the work I do.”
Meester, who stars in new time-travel comedy series Making History, went on to express her frustration at the limited types of on-screen roles available for women compared to men.
“I think the perception is: You’re an ingenue, or you’re an icon, or you’re a mum,” she said. “There’s no in between. The excitement for a lot of people is: Man and woman meet, get married, then have a baby. But in the meantime, there’s so much more to women.
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“We have these flawed heroes so often leading shows. But a flawed heroine? She’s portrayed in a different way: so much more of a bitch, and if she’s older, certainly a dried up one.”
It’s a sad but true indictment of the treatment of women in Hollywood that Leighton is now at an age where she’ll likely miss out on playing female characters in their teens and twenties to younger actresses. Will it make a difference whether casting directors know she’s a mother in real life or not? Watch this space.
