Melissa McCarthy doesn't like movies that show perfection.
Melissa McCarthy
The 'Can You Ever Forgive Me?' actress insists films set in immaculate homes are not realistic and they just make viewers feel inadequate.
She said: "Like a breakfast-cereal commercial full of perfect, clean, shiny things. I always noticed that. Even as a kid, I always thought, 'How's everything so clean? Where are the dirty clothes? Where's the junk in the kitchen? Where's the stuff that makes it seem real?' It makes people feel inadequate."
And the 48-year-old actress has never met anyone like the "perfect" women depicted in movies.
She told the Sunday Times Culture magazine: "They're so pleasant and so nice. They always have their hair and make-up done. I don't know any of those women. I've never met a perfect woman, or a perfect man. I wouldn't know how to play someone who just says 'Oh, Tom' or 'Oh, Bill'."
Melissa finds it frustrating to receive scripts that provide long, detailed descriptions of the lead male characters, but his female co-stars are just described as "leggy - a knockout".
She noted: "You can't play those. Those are not qualities you can play. It's hard to play blonde. It doesn't make a lot of sense."
'Can You Ever Forgive Me?' is a true story in which Melissa plays a struggling biographer who began forging letters by dead celebrities and though her character, Lee Israel, seems "unlikeable", the actress liked her because of her flaws.
She said: "She chose loneliness. I think her prickly, abrasive ways made people say, 'She's so unlikeable.' But I like her because of her defence mechanism. She kind of pushed people aside so there's less chance to get hurt herself. She didn't need you to like her.
"I don't think she particularly even wanted people to like her -- it wasn't important to her. And today I think that's what everyone needs, knowing how people feel about them, as opposed to knowing how you feel about yourself. I got the feeling she was like an armadillo, just kind of waiting within her shell and hoping people would go away."
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