Rose McGowan says she 'never' liked working in Hollywood: 'It was a means to an end'

Updated ·3 min read

Rose McGowan says she never actually “liked working in Hollywood.”

In a revealing Instagram post, the former actress, who served as an early silence breaker against former media mogul and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, gave a lengthy explanation to why she found showbiz to be unsatisfying.

Sharing an older photo of herself sporting raven-colored hair and a revealing red slip dress, McGowan detailed some of her reasons for leaving the industry.

“I get asked a lot if I ever liked working in Hollywood. My answer is no. I never did. It was a means to my end. My goals. My Hollywood was a job filled with mostly sociopathic predators shooting damaged fish in a barrel. We, the beautiful ones, we were the fish. We were their targets,” she wrote.

Calling herself one of many “weak gazelles in the herd,” McGowan went on to explain how the experience crushed her.

“It was too much for me. Look in my eyes. Ask me again if I liked it. No. But you wouldn’t either if you’d been made fun of, shunned, looked down upon, considered dirty all because someone everyone knew as King Predator and a total piece of s***, told them to do so directly or indirectly,” said McGowan, referring to Weinstein, whom she has accused of raping her in 1997. Earlier this year, McGowan mentioned her fears Weinstein would send someone to harm her, saying she once sat at home wondering “if he’ll hire a hitman to kill me” if he were to be convicted. In March Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison following convictions for third-degree rape and first-degree criminal sexual act.

In the post, McGowan went on to speak about her former agent Leslie Sieber, whom she calls “dead-souled,” claiming Sieber told her to speak less in meetings because she was intimidating men with her vocabulary.

“I was destroyed by that comment. It was late in my ‘career’ and I was stunned. Imagine how tired I was? Years of that directly to my face. But it was so demoralizing. I went into my car and cried and tried to figure out a way out of my life,” she wrote.

McGowan says that ultimately, she’s glad she was cast out by Hollywood because they “did her a favor.”

“You helped get me mad enough to crack the glass ceiling of thought. I hope now you take your clients seriously. They are smarter than you. How you treat them is how they are treated is how the world is treated. Stop it,” she said, referring to agents in Hollywood as “low-key human traffickers.”

“Sanctioned pimping if you ask me. Listen to your clients. Respect them. Don’t sell your clients out to the invisible rules of bulls*** Hollywood. P.S. you always did suck,” she concluded the post.

Back in May, McGowan told Yahoo Music she had no regrets about leaving Hollywood, comparing it to “doing undercover work for so long that you just lose your brain.”

“But then I found it again and I wrote my way out of Hollywood,” she said.

Now focusing on everything from activism and filmmaking to writing and music, McGowan has no desire to return to acting because it’s simply not for her anymore.

“It was my day job. I acquitted myself very well, but it wasn't the love of my life,” she said. “I refused to give up who I was forever just to stay in a [Hollywood] system that I fundamentally disagree with, that I think is a cult. … and then I get blacklisted after being sexually assaulted, and then what job are you doing to do? Then it was like taking the dregs and scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get what [roles] I could. That's just a crap way to live. And it's not artistically where I live.”

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