An accusation made in Venice
The accusation was made in Venice. It came from the actor Susan Sarandon. She is an Oscar winner. Sarandon said she is losing film roles and that the reason is her vocal, public support for Palestinians. It is a serious claim. One that directly implicates major Hollywood studios.
She was speaking at the Venice film festival on or around 6 September 2026. Her attendance was part of her professional duties, as she was in Italy to promote her latest film, a picture titled ‘The Echo Chamber’. The international press tour for a movie provides actors with a significant global platform, a platform that Sarandon used to state her belief that she is being professionally punished for her political views. The statement was not random. It was deliberate. It came during a formal press event.
The language Sarandon used was specific. She told journalists that she and other outspoken critics of Israel have found it ‘impossible’ to get hired by major studios. The word was ‘impossible’. This suggests a complete refusal to engage, not merely a preference for other actors. The statement alleges that certain sections of the film industry continue to shun her because of her long held activism on the issue. She is not talking about independent cinema. She is talking about the large, powerful studios that finance mainstream movies.
Her remarks also included an observation about the public mood. Sarandon believes she is seeing a ‘broader shift in public opinion’, one that is moving against the historic American government support for Israel. This observation creates a direct contrast with her personal experience. She says that while public attitudes may be changing, her own career prospects inside the studio system have not improved at all. The opportunities are not there. She is still being shut out.
This is not a new position
This position is not a new one. Not for Susan Sarandon. Her activism concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a consistent feature of her public life for many years, making her claim in Venice less a sudden revelation and more an update on a long running and difficult situation. She is a known quantity. The political views she holds are not a recent development, adopted in the heat of a single moment. This context matters. It fundamentally shapes the entire accusation, shifting it from a reaction to a single event to a description of a sustained pattern of behaviour inside Hollywood. Her allegation is not that she was penalised for one specific remark made last week, or for attending a single protest last month.
The claim is about a sustained professional consequence. It is a quiet, persistent pressure. The sources confirm this timeline. They report that Sarandon feels studios have ‘continued’ to shun her, a single word that points towards a deep and lengthy history of perceived exclusion from the mainstream movie business. For years, she has been an outspoken critic of Israeli policy and a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause. Her stance has been consistent and very public, separating her from other artists who might comment on a political issue once before retreating into silence. Sarandon has not retreated. She has not gone silent.
This persistence is central to understanding her recent statement at the film festival. She is not describing a single door closing unexpectedly. She is describing a whole corridor of locked doors, encountered over a period of years, all apparently closed for the very same reason. She believes her politics are the key. Her outspoken support for Palestinians, a position she has held through multiple global news cycles and shifting geopolitical events, has, in her view, made her a significant liability in the cautious eyes of major studio executives and financiers. This has a cost. A clear professional cost. She is saying the bill has come due repeatedly.
The available reports do not list specific prior events leading to this point. No dates of past rallies are provided. No specific quotes from previous years are detailed in the immediate reporting from Venice. The evidence for the long history of her activism rests on her own description of the situation as an ongoing problem and her well established public persona as a deeply political actor. The very core of her claim is that her career prospects have been consistently and negatively affected by a political stance she has refused to abandon, placing her in direct opposition to powerful financial and political interests within the American film industry. This is the crucial backstory. It is a long one. She says it continues today, with no end in sight.
How a grey list works
No actual list exists. Not on paper. An informal 'grey list' operates not through written directives but through quiet conversations, shared assumptions, and the subtle calculations of risk made by powerful people in Hollywood offices. These are the conversations that happen between a studio financier in Century City and a casting director in Burbank, or between an agent at Creative Artists Agency and a producer seeking to attach talent. The process is deniable. It is invisible. Its goal is simple. Avoid problems.
An actor’s agent is the first line of defence. Or the first point of failure. Their primary job is to secure roles for their client, but they also have a professional imperative to maintain good relationships with the handful of major studios that finance most large budget productions. If an agent senses a particular actor has become 'controversial', they might quietly stop submitting them for major studio projects, focusing instead on independent films or European productions. The actor may never know. They would just hear about fewer auditions. The agent can blame the market, the script, or a hundred other factors without ever mentioning a client's political statements.
Studio executives think about money. That is their job. A major film is a huge financial gamble, often costing hundreds of millions of pounds before a single ticket is sold, and producers are intensely focused on mitigating any risk to that investment. A politically outspoken actor represents risk. They risk becoming the story, distracting from the film itself and potentially alienating a segment of the potential audience in crucial domestic or international markets. This can poison a press tour. It can trigger online campaigns. The casting director then receives a simple instruction, 'Let’s go in a different direction'. No reason needs to be given.
Casting directors sit in the middle. They receive the brief from the studio and the producer, and they create lists of potential actors for every role. Their success depends on their ability to understand not just the creative needs of the director but also the unstated commercial preferences of the people who write the cheques. They hear the whispers. They know the difficult names. If a studio has decided an actor is too risky, that actor’s name simply stops appearing on the shortlists for roles they might otherwise be perfect for. The decision is never recorded as being about politics. It is justified with other words, a scheduling conflict, a lack of chemistry, the search for a fresh face, and the system protects itself through plausible deniability at every stage, making it almost impossible to prove why any one person was not hired for any one job.
Are there other reasons?
Casting decisions are private. A reason is never given. An actor simply hears that the studio went another way, leaving them to guess the real cause. Susan Sarandon points to her activism. But there are other powerful forces at play in Hollywood. One is age.
The industry has a well documented problem with older women. Sarandon is 79 years old. The number of substantial, complex leading roles written for women of her generation is vanishingly small compared to the opportunities available to them in their thirties or forties. This is a brutal commercial calculation, driven by a studio system obsessed with the 18 to 34 year old demographic and a belief that audiences want to see youth on screen. For every Jane Fonda or Helen Mirren who maintains a high profile career, countless other decorated actresses see their options narrow dramatically, finding themselves offered a repetitive cycle of matriarchs, wise grandmothers, or brief, eccentric cameos. It is a very different reality from the one faced by many of their male contemporaries, who are often permitted to play romantic leads and action heroes deep into their sixties and seventies. The kind of morally ambiguous, challenging lead characters that defined Sarandon's peak career in films like *Thelma & Louise* or *Dead Man Walking* are simply not being written for 79 year old women.
Other factors also exist. Purely commercial ones. An actor's perceived box office appeal can wane, especially if their recent projects have been independent films rather than blockbusters. Salary expectations can be a barrier. A director might have a different performer in mind from the very beginning. The modern studio model, built around vast, interconnected franchises, also favours younger actors who can be signed to long term, multi film contracts, a commitment many veteran performers may be unwilling or unsuited to make. Any one of these elements could be enough to remove a name from a casting director’s list for a major production. The decision would be purely business. Not personal. Not political.
It is also possible that these factors are not mutually exclusive. They could combine. A studio executive does not necessarily separate the variables but instead sees a single profile of compounded risk, an older actor with a history of political controversy who may not appeal to a target demographic and could become a distraction during a press tour. The perceived liability of her age and the perceived liability of her politics may merge into one simple conclusion for a financier protecting a hundred million pound investment: find someone else. Proving which element was decisive is impossible. The system protects itself. The silence is total.
She is not the only one
Susan Sarandon’s allegation is not made in a vacuum. She spoke of others. The most public example is the actor Melissa Barrera. Barrera was the lead in the modern reboot of the 'Scream' horror franchise. She was fired. Spyglass Media Group, the production company behind the films, dismissed her in November 2023 ahead of the seventh instalment. The company released a statement. It said it had 'zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hatred in any form'. This referred to social media posts Barrera had made concerning the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which Spyglass felt had crossed a line into hate speech.
The dismissal was immediate. It was also very loud. Barrera had been central to the successful relaunch of the series, a new face for a new generation of fans, and her removal caused a significant public reaction. Her co star, Jenna Ortega, departed the project soon after, though her exit was officially attributed to scheduling conflicts with another production. Barrera herself defended her statements, arguing she was speaking out for human rights and condemning all forms of prejudice, including antisemitism. Regardless of the intent, the consequence was clear. A lead actor in a profitable franchise was removed for her political speech. It was a warning shot.
Other figures in Hollywood have faced similar professional setbacks. The agent Maha Dakhil, a powerful dealmaker at the Creative Artists Agency whose client list included Tom Cruise and Natalie Portman, was forced to step down from her leadership role on the agency's internal board after she reposted content on social media described by critics as antisemitic. She was not fired. She remained an agent. But she was publicly rebuked by her own employer and stripped of a senior position. Actors like John Cusack, long an outspoken critic of American foreign policy, have also claimed that their activism has made it harder to secure roles in major studio productions, echoing the exact sentiment expressed by Sarandon in Venice. The pattern is not one of a formal blacklist, a relic of a previous era, but of something more subtle. It is a series of individual commercial decisions, made by different executives at different studios, all arriving at the same quiet conclusion about managing risk.
The public mood may be changing
Susan Sarandon claims the public is changing its mind. That was her assertion in Venice. She described a ‘broader shift in public opinion’ against American support for Israel, a development she believes is already well under way. The source for this observation was her own perception. It was not supported by data. Yet if she is correct, the commercial logic that governs Hollywood casting decisions could also begin to change, altering the career prospects for actors who have found themselves on the wrong side of a studio’s risk assessment. The studios are not political. They are financial. Their decisions are driven by profit.
The core calculation is always about money. It is about the box office. Studio executives and financiers make judgements based on whether an actor’s public profile will help or harm a film’s ability to find the widest possible audience. A political stance that alienates a large segment of potential ticket buyers, or that creates negative press cycles which disrupt a marketing campaign, is a liability. It is a number on a balance sheet. But if that political stance becomes more mainstream, or if the audience that objects to it is demonstrably smaller than the audience that supports it, the calculation inverts. The risk evaporates. It might even become an asset. Controversy itself is not always a negative, provided it drives ticket sales instead of boycotts.
The industry will now watch. The real test of Sarandon’s theory will not be found in opinion polls or protest movements, but in the casting announcements for the next wave of major studio films. Will actors who have been professionally penalised, like Melissa Barrera, be brought back into big budget productions, or will they continue to work primarily in independent cinema outside the established system? What will be the commercial fate of films starring outspoken figures, and will their press tours become a new kind of political battleground for studios to manage? Silence from the major talent guilds, such as SAG AFTRA, on the issue of political speech and employment has been notable. Future public statements, or a lack of them, will be significant. The bottom line is the box office. It always is.
Sources. Guardian UK: Susan Sarandon says she is losing movie roles because of her support for Palestine. Al Jazeera: Susan Sarandon says she still loses film roles over support for Palestine.
Analysis. Drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed above and reviewed by an editor before publication. Jnews links to the organisations it writes about.
