Aaron Sorkin thinks female roles have a lesser 'degree of difficulty'

Aaron Sorkin thinks female roles have a lesser 'degree of difficulty'

That headline is misleading when not placed in the proper context. He was arguing that it did not take as good a performance to win a "best actress" Oscar as to win "best actor." He was certainly right about the specific year he was analyzing, 2013, in which an actress could have won by topping Jennifer Lawrence's performance in Silver Linings Playbook (certainly doable), while an actor would have had to top Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, which would have required a great actor's performance of a lifetime, and even that would probably have not have been enough. However, that argument does not really contrast male vs female, but everyone else vs Daniel Day-Lewis, who is on a separate level from us mere mortals. If Lewis had not been in the hunt, Jennifer Lawrence's performance would have been on the same level as any of the other nominees.

He also pointed out that the female roles are not as meaty. "There just aren’t that many tour-de-force roles out there for women." He may well be right about that, but he's probably the most sought-after writer around today and I don't see him doing much to remedy the situation. On the other hand, I suppose you can argue that he writes female roles which are approximately as good as his male roles, in that all of his characters sound exactly alike.