First in an occasional series featuring prominent women working in Hollywood today.

Nancy Meyers is the most financially successful female filmmaker of all time. She is the most successful female writer and director in Hollywood. She is the only woman on IMDB’s Greatest Directors’ List. She has thrice been nominated for Golden Globes (Best Musical or Comedy for Baby Boom in 1987; Best Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay for It’s Complicated in 2010). Her movies regularly make over $200 million, yet she still struggles to get films made, and while her male counterparts – directors like Judd Apatow and Paul Feig – get accolades.

Many reviewers (and notably many male reviewers) are notably less forgiving of her romantic comedies, which have often been tagged as “glossy” or dismissed with similar adjectives. In fact, a case could be made for a gender gap in the way her films are received. Even as some men dismiss her films, many women view her as a feminist.

Nancy Meyers as a radical feminist? Yes. Nancy Meyers. Lets look at the evidence. Her first super successful collaboration on a screenplay, Private Benjamin (1979), focused on a widow who rejected family, a marriage proposal and chose instead a by Deal Top’> career in the army – not such a strange idea now – but certainly cutting edge at the time. Baby Boom (1987), which she co-wrote with then husband, Charles Shyer, focused on a woman who inherited a baby while working for a man who wouldn’t promote women with children. What Women Want (2000), which Nancy directed, has Helen Hunt getting the job the man – Mel Gibson – wants. In 2003 she explored the May-December romance, not that unusual when almost any movie you see has some old guy teamed with some woman young enough to be his daughter, but in Something’s Gotta Give it was an older woman who was wooed by a younger man. The list could go on until we reach her most recent film, The Intern (2015), which covers a woman running her own start-up, with a stay-at-home hubby and a well adjusted child, who faces challenges but is not bowed by them. In the film Anne Hathaway deals with many of the issues that women in the workforce are battling today, once again proving Myers’ ability to tap into the zeitgeist of the moment and explaining the popularity of her films. She deals with topics women are facing that no one else embraces. In The Intern she also deals with ageism.

Her films have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, and she often takes on the big men of the industry – Jack Nicholson, Mel Gibson, Alec Baldwin, Keanu Reeves and Robert di Nero, eliciting subtle, nuanced performances that differ from their normal body of work. Please note that these are high testosterone names. “I think they enjoy being able to be a guy where they don’t have to be only one thing,” explains Nancy of her rapport with the big guns of the acting community. “Strength isn’t about violence. The men in my films show a different kind of strength and I think they are appreciative that I’m interested in not showing the same side of what males are about.” “My emphasis is on the actor. I want my films to be shot properly, but the day at the office for me is with the actors. They are the ones telling my story. I’m so appreciative of what they do. I help them get there but then, at a certain point in shooting, they embody their characters so beautifully, I only need to whisper a direction.’

So given her success with both the box office and what she elicits from actors, why isn’t she making more films? Meyers goes quiet. “Its a hard subject for me to talk about, for me to take on.” When pushed she says what she’s maybe been trying to avoid saying, “This town is a boy’s club. There is no equal opportunity, nor equal pay. I don’t know who is to blame. Nobody knows why, except the culture at large. It’s harder for women everywhere. I don’t think the kind of movies that Hollywood is making recently – the Marvel movies, the big action movies – they don’t tend to put women on the list to direct them. And many men don’t want to star in a film where the woman is the lead. There’s no parity there.” Then there’s the perceived ‘quota’ system, “like, ‘We’ve already hired a woman this year.’ It’s shocking.” “There’s only so much money the studios have and they have to parse it out. And if a woman has a movie that doesn’t work – they often don’t get another chance, and women are often not credited with the success of a film when it does succeed … not the way men are.”

She also lays part of the blame at the culture of men. “Most of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes are men. Many journalists are men. My movies are female centric so there’s a judgment attached to them. Is the writing less good? Is the directing less good? Are the performances less strong if they don’t fit the male expectation? These are really conversations about what is going on in our world and how we see ourselves, as women. Why isn’t there a lot of value put on that?” “Only 6% of films are directed by women.” “They look at movies with a strong female point of view, like Bridesmaids or Trainwreck and say it’s a one-off. They never seem to get that the audience is there and they’ll come for another. The audience wants and deserves diversity.” 

Nancy Meyers writes about a new kind of heroine – someone who has it together, who is following her passion. To put it plainly, her films are about character, for both men and women. “No one has it all perfectly, but I write films that are optimistic about women. I want them to succeed.” “They’re smart and handle the issues that arise with humor.” They are not waiting to be rescued or be by Deal Top’> completed. “They are not a male version of what a woman should be. There are enough people putting that vision on the big screen.”

See our exclusive by Deal Top’> video with Nancy Meyers, here.