Sawt Falasteen - Star Julianne Moore hates 'guns and explosions', warns women are losing out

The Oscar-winner said women have to band together with the number of women and girl leads in top-grossing movies down to 37 percent -- a 10 percent drop in one year.

The fall comes after study earlier this year also by the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found only nine of the 100 biggest US movies last year were directed by women.

"It's not endemic just to the film industry, it's global," Moore said at the Cannes Film Festival, after getting a Women In Motion award from the luxury group Kering.

"There's not representation in the media, there's not representation in higher education. There are lots of places where we don't have the representation we deserve," the actor added.

"How do you change that? You do it slowly, steadily, speaking up, using your privilege, hiring more, talking about alliances," Moore said.

"I feel like women are each other's greatest allies, and that's the secret sauce."

Moore, 65, said progress has been made, saying "I can remember being on a set not too long ago where the only women were me and the third AC," who takes care of the focus on the camera.

"I said (to her), 'Look around the room. We're the only ones here.'"

"It's when Hillary Clinton lost the election and we were both devastated."

Moore, who broke through in Robert Altman's film "Short Cuts" in 1993, said it was "unusual when I was coming up to see women on a crew. There's more female directors and writers now."

Moore, who won her Oscar for "Still Alice" in 2015, and has four other nominations, said she gives gratuitously violent or shocking films a wide berth.

"When things are rough globally.... I don't like someone being murdered," said the "Magnolia" star.

"I don't like explosions and guns. I don't like histrionics. I don't like things that raise the stakes without real feeling underneath... I don't want to watch it."

W.Mansour--SF-PST