Beckinsale recalled attending an all-girls school where she “never had to worry about raising my hand making me possibly unfeminine” and studying at “a university in which intellectual debate was not only encouraged, but the entire point of attending,” noting she’s “very aware how lucky I am to have had those experiences.”
The Underworld alum then addressed her comments in the interview. “When I said it has been a handicap in Hollywood it’s PRECISELY because being female AND having an opinion often has to be quite carefully packaged so as not to be offensive or as in this case, deliberately twisted into signifying ones perceived superiority or arrogance,” she wrote. “It’s abundantly clear that this is still the case, and these journalists who spun this into me ‘bragging’ is a part of the exact reason I say it was and is a handicap. As a woman truthfully answering a question about my own IQ, I have been the subject of a few articles trying to shame me for it. This is EXACTLY what I mean by a handicap.”
While Beckinsale noted she doesn’t “often respond to this sort of bulls–t,” she said “it’s really important to me that NO percentage of women let alone 60% (Grazia magazine, 2019) should feel they need to lie or dumb down under ANY circumstances so as not to be a target.”
“Facts: I’ve done some good movies and some s–t movies,” she concluded. “I’ve made some good and bad choices in my personal life. I have a really tolerant cat. My IQ is 152 and if that triggers you, @thecut, (despite your 2015 article on Salma Hayek stating the opposite) that’s your problem. Also, pick a side. Also, IQ doesn’t actually mean s–t. But stop perfomatively [sic] supporting women while pulling crummy s–t like this.”
