Emily Ratajkowski Reveals She Quit Acting After Feeling Like a ‘Piece of Meat’ to Hollywood

Emily Ratajkowski told the Los Angeles Times she has given up acting because Hollywood made her feel like a “piece of meat.” Her acting career began with the supporting role in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, in which Ratajkowski portrayed Andie Fitzgerald, Nick Dunne’s (Ben Affleck) student who is having an affair with him as well. After appearing in films such as We Are Your Friends and I Feel Pretty, she hasn’t appeared in a movie since Lying and Stealing in 2019. “I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, I’m an artist performing and this is my outlet,’” Ratajkowski said of quitting acting. “I felt like a piece of meat who people were judging, saying, ‘Does she have anything else other than her [breasts]?’” 

In the aftermath of Gone Girl, Ratajkowski invested a lot of time and effort in finding roles demonstrating she was a “serious actress with longevity.” Despite her efforts, Ratajkowski was only offered supporting roles, but it wasn’t because she didn’t try. While auditioning for films such as Ruben Stlund’s Cannes winner and Oscar nominee Triangle of Sadness, she lost out to the late Charlbi Dean for the role of Yaya. After realizing working in Hollywood would mean making herself “digestible to powerful men,” Ratajkowski fired her acting agent, commercial representative, and manager in early 2020. “I didn’t trust them,” Ratajkowski said. “I was like, ‘I can handle receiving phone calls. I’m gonna make these decisions. None of you have my best interest at heart. And you all hate women.’”She once attended a WME party with her husband Sean Bear-McClard, whose agent, who was clearly drunk, told her she was “like Pamela Anderson before the hep C.” The experience left Ratajkowski disillusioned with Hollywood.

“I thought about the way that [Bear-McClard] had glided through the room, a room full of men who only two years before had been kissing Harvey Weinstein’s ring and encouraging their young female clients to take meetings with him in hotel rooms,” Ratajkowski wrote in an essay from her book, My Body. “I hated that my husband was at all connected to these men. “Maybe that’s why right now I’m not really interested in men’s POVs,” Ratajkowski told the Los Angeles Times. “Because they were lies. And I don’t mean infidelity. This is a fucked up world. Like, Hollywood is fucked up. And it’s dark… I had a hard time even being at a party like that. But then having a part of me that was so connected to it was even harder.” There is currently a contentious divorce and custody battle between Ratajkowski and Bear-McClard, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by several women in a Variety article published last month. Bear-McClard declined to comment at that time through a spokesperson in response to the allegations.