Film producer Emma Thomas inspires lifestyle balance within the industry
Written by Ali Grutchfield, Illustration by Halle Garrett
One of my favorite aspects of SCAD is that every student has such an immense interest and ambition within the realm of art. I love hearing students talk about who inspired them to pursue such a grand adventure. Growing up, I had a diverse myriad of artistic inspirations spanning from my nanny who was previously an art teacher, to Salvador Dali, to whatever director had made the most recent movie I’d seen. However, as I’ve become a more passionate filmmaker, I’ve curated my taste and found artists that I would love to emulate. My prime artistic inspiration is Emma Thomas because of her instrumental role in producing my favorite films and her overall lifestyle choices.
As a female filmmaker who loves sci-fi and action movies, I often struggle to find powerful women making big strides in those areas. However, Emma Thomas has taken the assumption that women can’t make those types of films and has crushed it. Much of my admiration for Emma Thomas stems from the monumental role she’s played in Hollywood, not making it about herself but rather about the magic. Although she’s produced films such as “Interstellar,” “The Dark Knight” and “Inception,” so many people are unfamiliar with who she is and she is content with that.
Rather than needing to make her entire career about her femininity and representation, she lets her work speak for itself. She has always been a huge testament to me that women don’t always need to be in the spotlight to break down barriers. Not everything a woman does needs to be revolutionary or unprecedented. Instead, Thomas is simply taking advantage of her seat at the table and normalizing powerful women.
Although Thomas’s films have amassed billions of dollars at the box office, she still lives a lifestyle in defiance of modern hustle culture. As someone with many hobbies but a passion for film, I grew up worried that choosing film meant I would be perpetually overworked and exhausted. But Thomas has helped me see the falsity in that because she sets limits on work to maintain the family-oriented lifestyle she desires.
In the film industry, it’s common for producers to be working on numerous films at a time. However, Thomas refuses to be ever working on more than one because she knows it would deduct from other aspects of her life. I love knowing that saying no to more work doesn’t make her weak and saying yes to work doesn’t make her absent in her children’s lives. I’m excited for the day that I can be a mother and a filmmaker, influencing some little girl’s life the way Emma Thomas influenced mine.
Emma Thomas is the person responsible for my favorite movies and is my north star when I’m lost. I look up to the lifestyle she lives that lets her find joy in all the things she desires, from family, to hobbies and to success. Although I want to carve my own path in this world, it’s powerful women like Emma Thomas who remind me why I’m walking through this unknown forest in the first place.
