Patricia Arquette just can’t stop poor-mouthing—and also putting her foot in her mouth.
She turned her Oscar-acceptance speech for best supporting actress (Boyhood) into a 77-cents-on-the-dollar political mini-harangue about women’s supposed unequal-pay problems: “To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights….It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”
Hmm, a Hollywood star in a designer evening gown complaining about a lack of “wage equality”? Arquette, by the way, has a net worth of $24 million.
And Arquette’s loudest cheerleader that night was…Meryl Streep. Um, how much is Streep, winner of three Academy awards and hardly ever out of work, worth these days? Oh right, $65 million. She made $5 million on Julie and Julia (2009) and another $5 million on The Devil Wears Prada (2006). I’d like to have some of that unequal pay.
Then Arquette got into trouble with the LGBT crowd when she expanded her thoughts in a press interview after the awards: “It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”
Oops! Tweeters promptly took Arquette to task for assuming that gay people have already won equality. As Time’s Eliana Dokterman wrote: “Comments like these make queer women and women of color hesitant about joining the mainstream movement, which can seem exclusionary and oblivious to intersectionality.”
We shouldn’t be oblivious to “intersectionality”!
Then, when the tricky issue of Arquette’s actual wealth started to raise its embarrassing head, she told a reporter, “I paid more money to my babysitter and my dog walker than I made on 'Boyhood,' and to be in 'Boyhood!'"
Her dog walker?
And finally, there was that elegant gown Arquette wore to the Oscars: Oh, that was just something her gal-pal Rosetta Getty stitched up for her. “We’ve been best friends for a long long time and she happens to be an amazing designer so I just thought I would be most comfortable in someone I love’s design,” Arquette said.
Lest you think Getty is just a housewife-next-door who happens to know her way around a sewing machine, think again. (That surname “Getty” might provide a clue.) Here’s Harper’s Bazaar:
Rosetta Getty is nervous. Kirsten Dunst, Courteney Cox, and Joaquin Phoenix are among the guests due to arrive any minute for an intimate dinner gathering on the outdoor patio of her Los Angeles home, and it's been raining on and off all day, with unseasonably frigid temperatures.
***
The party is a celebration of her new niche fashion label, Riser Goodwyn. A former model and designer of children's clothing, Getty, 37, first tried her hand at a women's line seven years ago, but life intervened. One marriage to actor Balthazar Getty, 32, and three kids later, she produced and showed her first collection last year. Tonight her friends will model dresses from her Fall 2007 line.
But even in southern California, you can't count on the weather to cooperate. A few hours ago, after several tree limbs started blowing down, Getty brought everything inside — all the square white plates, white and smoky-brown glasses, cymbidium-orchid centerpieces, and 33 Lomo compact-camera place cards created by her friend Brigette Romanek, a bag designer. "But it just didn't work, so I said, "We're doing it outside anyway, and it's going to be okay," Getty says.
After all, she and Balthazar, a great-grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty and star of TV's Brothers & Sisters, have one of the most spectacular views in all of Los Angeles. At the peak of Nichols Canyon, their modern home overlooks city lights sparkling right to the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
As Getty gets dressed, Patricia Arquette, her best friend from childhood, bursts into the room, gives a quick hug hello, and breaks the news: "We're going to freeze!" Leave it to cousin Jacqui Getty to turn the mood around. She pulls out a goody box of jewelry and shoes, and the women soon forget about the weather. When she spots her Yves Saint Laurent heels, Eva Mendes screeches, "It's Belle de Jour in a shoe!" Shimmying into her black wool-and-cotton Riser Goodwyn dress with a wide white leather belt, Mendes declares, "It's very tight! I won't be having bread tonight.”
Oh, and by the way, when Arquette earlier accepted Golden Globes and SAG awards for her Boyhood performance, she wore gowns designed by Escada and Vivienne Westwood.
Again, give me some of that movie-star “wage inequality”!
The above item was originally published at iwf.org/blog on February 24 with the headline, "Arquette Oops: Why, I Pay My Babysitter and Dog Walker More than I Made on 'Boyhood!'"
