'4PercentChallenge': Female directors the way to go for Andrea Riseborough

Andrea Riseborough has announced her commitment to work with a female director in the next 18 months and the actor urged her British counterparts to also take up a similar pledge. The 37-year-old actor made the pledge as part of the Time's up movement's "4PercentChallenge".

The Time's Up movement, launched in the wake of Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal in 2017, and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative have come up with the initiative of "4PercentChallenge" which aims to increase the number of women directing major studio films. Riseborough, who last featured in Nicolas Cage-starrer "Mandy", has teamed with Time's Up UK chair Heather Rabbatts to call on the British film industry to follow suit.

"We are urging the film industry here in the UK to be purposeful in how inclusion is advocated for. That's why Time's Up and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative initiated the #4PercentChallenge, and we are delighted to announce Andrea Riseborough's commitment to the challenge, the first British actor to do so since Tessa Thompson formally launched it at Sundance earlier this year," said Rabbatts. Riseborough said the industry used to once operate on the idea of merit, but in the current era, the concept of inclusion has become a "cultural necessity".

"Mine is an influential industry and its fruits effect our social consciousness. I'm committing to working with a female director in the next 18 months because although women make up 50 per cent of moviegoers only four per cent of studio films are directed by women. On projects directed by women we have statistics to prove more women also end up onscreen and behind the camera," she added. The actor joins the growing list of artists like Lena Waithe, Rashida Jones, Olivia Wilde, Armie Hammer, Kumail Nanjiani, Josh Gad, Amy Pascal, Bryce Dallas Howard, Brie Larson, Eva Longoria, Rachel Brosnahan, Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez and Kerry Washington to take up the "4PercentChallenge".

(With inputs from agencies.)