Kate Bosworth: 'Blue Crush' could easily have been 'exploitative' with other male directors

Kate Bosworth didn't let early '00s Hollywood crush her before her big break in "Blue Crush."

The actress reflected on her breakout role and what could have been a bikini-clad “Girls Gone Wild” parody of a surf sports movie.

"I was reading a lot of screenplays in 2001, and the female leads were definitely not multi-dimensional," Bosworth said. "The ones that showed a lot of depth were quite competitive, and I was 'nobody' at the time. Being a young blonde girl, there were a lot of stereotypical bitchy, dumb, or tasteless roles. Not getting roles was not not frustrating because that's the name of the game, but the stereotypes were disappointing."

She added, "If you remember the early 2000s, they could be pretty cruel to young girls, so I felt a bit discouraged."

Well, until director John Stockwell and producer Brian Grazer sent him the full script for "Blue Crush".

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"I fell in love with it so much. Looking back, those experiences are like lightning in a bottle," Bosworth explained. in hindsight, in the wrong hands, it could have been quite abusive."

The 'Elizabethland' star continued, "I think a movie with girls running around in bikinis might be a different version of what it was, certainly in the early 2000s. John and Brian are surfers, so they had no interest in exploiting that other possibility. They were determined to tell a true and authentic surfing story, and it happened to be through the eyes of women."

After the success of the film, which also starred Michelle Rodriguez and Sanoe Lake, Bosworth recalled being "considered for every strong sports role" out of the blue. "I remember thinking, 'Oh, that's how this whole game works. They don't believe you until you prove it, and that's all they want you to do,” Bosworth recalled. "So I decided to do the opposite. I made a movie called 'Wonderland', and it was a very realistic true story. I was interested in living in someone totally different."

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As for the rest of the "Blue Crush" team, director Stockwell went on to helm "Into the Blue" and episodes of "The L Word," while Oscar-winning producer Grazer continued his collaborations with longtime with director Ron Howard, most recently behind "Thirteen Lives" and the "Under the Banner of Heaven" series.

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