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Story by: Jack Foley
STAR Trek and X-Men star, Patrick
Stewart, has hit out at Hollywood - and Quentin Tarantino in particular
- for what he describes as an 'extremely irresponsible' approach
to featuring violence towards women.
Speaking at the launch of an Amnesty International campaign on
violence against women, Stewart admitted that he deeply regretted
being involved in projects that sent out the wrong message.
He has appeared as a movie villain on occasion, most notable
alongside Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts in Conspiracy Theory.
However, Stewart singled out Kill
Bill as a film which was particularly offensive towards women,
and blasted its depiction of violence, labelling it as 'a deeply
offensive movie'.
Turning to his own projects, he confessed: "I have been
involved in sequences, both in the theatre and in film, which,
with hindsight, I realise were offensive because they were perpetuating
a stereotype," he said.
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"Violence against women diminishes us all. If you fail to
raise your hand in protest you are part of the problem,"
he added.
Stewart made the comments as he helped to launch Amnesty's global
Stop the Violence campaign.
And he went on to accuse the entertainment industry of beng 'extremely
irresponsible in perpetuating and stereotyping the violent attitudes
of men to women'.
"It's a lazy and sensationalist approach, and I condemn
it entirely," he continued.
Turning to Tarantino, in particular, he went on: "I condemn,
utterly, films like Kill Bill, which we are told are empowering
women.
"But they are apparently empowering women to kill other
women which was the message that I took from the film."
The 63-year-old actor also revealed that he had witnessed his
own father hitting his mother as a child.
"It just so happens that here was an issue that I have a
personal association [with] and after consultation with my brothers,
we all felt that it was absolutely the right moment to speak out,"
he concluded.
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