My whole theory about why I couldn’t find any creators who realized they were leaving out female characters is because they were raised on the same ratio. I just heard someone the other day call it either ‘smurfing’ a movie, which is when there’s one female character, or ‘minioning’ a movie, which is when there’s no female characters.

They called and said, "I know we're not supposed to even tell you, but you've been offered to play the President." And I said, "OK. Say yes." And they were like, "Do you want to read it maybe?" And I was like, "No, I just want to be the president."

I had a deliberate plan to get into movies by becoming a model, so I went to New York and got a job pretending to be a mannequin in store windows.

I immediately noticed there were far more male characters than female characters in the programs, even now, in the 21st century.

I wanted to take up a sport the real way and see if I actually had athletic ability. And then I happened to see it was during the Atlanta Olympics. And there was a lot of coverage of archery because the U.S. men's team won all the medals. And I thought, "Wow, that's beautiful. And it's so dramatic, a beautiful sport. And I wonder if I would be good at it?"

We are in effect enculturating kids from the very beginning to see women and girls as not taking up half of the space.

My daughter was a toddler. I had no idea there was anything wrong with kids' media.I started watching little preschool shows with her or G-rated videos or whatever; I couldn't believe what I was seeing, that there seemed to be far more male characters than female characters in what we make for little kids. It was just a shock.