news Kate Bosworth: ‘Blue Crush’ Could Have Easily Been ‘Exploitative’ with Other Male Directors

Kate Bosworth didn’t let early 2000s Hollywood crush her ahead of her big break in “Blue Crush.”

The actress reflected on her breakout role and easily what could have been a bikini-clad “Girls Gone Wild” parody of a sports surfing film.

“I was reading a lot of scripts in 2001, and the parts for women were certainly not multidimensional,” Bosworth told Vulture. “The ones that were exhibiting a lot of depth were quite competitive, and I was a ‘no one’ at the time. Being a young blonde girl, there were a lot of roles that were stereotypical bitchy, dumb, or vapid. Not getting roles wasn’t frustrating because that’s the name of the game, but the stereotypes felt disappointing.”

She added, “If you remember the early 2000s, they could be pretty cruel for young girls, so I was feeling a little dejected.”

That is, until director John Stockwell and producer Brian Grazer sent her the full script for “Blue Crush.”

“I fell in love with it so much. In hindsight, these experiences are lightning in a bottle,” Bosworth shared. “I’m so grateful that John and Brian visualized the version of the movie that exists because in hindsight, in the wrong hands, it could have been pretty exploitative.”

The “Elizabethland” star continued, “I think that a movie with girls running around in bikinis could be a different version than it was, certainly in the early 2000s. John and Brian are surfers, so they didn’t have any interest in exploiting that other possibility. They were determined to tell a real, authentic surf story, and it just happened to be through the eyes of women.”

After the success of the film, also starring Michelle Rodriguez and Sanoe Lake, Bosworth recalled being “considered for every strong, athletic role” out of the blue. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s how this whole game works. They don’t believe you until you prove it, and then that’s all they want you to do,'” Bosworth recalled. “So I decided to do the opposite. I did a movie called ‘Wonderland,’ and it was a very gritty, true story. I was interested in inhabiting someone totally different.”

As for the rest of the “Blue Crush” team, director Stockwell went on to helm “Into the Blue” and episodes of “The L Word,” while Oscar-winning producer Grazer continued his longtime collaborations with director Ron Howard, most recently behind “Thirteen Lives” and series “Under the Banner of Heaven.”
 
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