Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, & A-List Stars Discuss Being a Woman in Hollywood

Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Mary J. Blige, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney and Saoirse Ronan are all featured on the cover of THR‘s annual dramatic actress roundtable issue.

Here’s what the stars had to share with the mag:

Jennifer, on being “punished” for standing up for herself on set: “Sometimes – I’ve had this happen: I finally made the decision to stand up for myself, and then I went to go to the bathroom at work and one of the producers stopped me and was like, ‘You know, we can hear you on the microphone, you’ve been really unruly.’ Which was not true, but basically my job was threatened because the director said something fucked up to me and I said, ‘That’s sick, you can’t talk to me like that,’ and then I was punished, and I got afraid that I wasn’t going to be hired again … I was called difficult and a nightmare.”

Jessica, on why things in Hollywood need to change: “You know what [Sorkin] said to me the other day when we were talking about what’s going on in the industry? He said that he was talking to his daughter, Roxy, and saying, ‘Listen, when you go into the workforce, if a guy grabs you or does something with you, you can scream, you can fight back.’ And she turned to him and said, ‘Dad, why are you teaching me to defend myself and not teaching those guys not to be creeps?’ The onus isn’t on women. Society has a way of blaming victims: You didn’t come out soon enough or you’re not asking for enough money. But the onus is on others not to abuse their power.”

Allison, on the pressure to look perfect: “For I, Tonya, I got to do this old-age makeup, and I was like three hours in this makeup, and then I saw myself and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is fantastic. I don’t have to worry about my jowls.’ It was so freeing to go and work on a part that I didn’t care what I looked like. Even seeing it, I was like, ‘Oh, God, I can watch myself because I look so awful.’”

For more from the stars, visit HollywoodReporter.com.