Olivia Wilde graces the cover of Glamour's September issue. And, in a twist, instead of promoting a film, she's promoting the fact that this fall, she will cohost the International Women's Media Foundation's Courage in Journalism Awards. Plus: Inside the issue, she's photographed breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding has been in the news lately; even though it's legal to do so in public in most states, many women find people — including employers — are not very understanding or accommodating.
Wilde tells the magazine:
Being shot with Otis is so perfect because any portrait of me right now isn't complete without my identity as a mother being a part of that. Breast-feeding is the most natural thing. I don't know, now it feels like Otis should always be on my breast. It felt like we were capturing that multifaceted woman we've been discussing—that we know we can be. You can be someone who is at once maternal and professional and sexy and self-possessed. [But] I mean, I certainly don't really look like that when I'm [typically] breast-feeding. And there's usually a diaper involved.
She also touches on working moms; her own mother is Leslie Cockburn, PBS Frontline alum, former Princeton journalism professor, and documentarian. Wilde says she never worried about balancing a career and motherhood…
[…] Because of the example of my mom. My mom is such a badass working mother. That inspired me when I was pregnant. I wasn't going to sacrifice myself because I was becoming a mother.
Wilde also talks about her early roles: "I felt that I had been cast in films that, though I was very excited to be a part of, didn't feel that they were actually the right roles for me. I felt like I was almost a fraud—like I somehow had become a kind of pinup version of myself." And about what she's doing next (working on a new HBO show with Martin Scorsese):
The biggest thing I did to change my career was to act on the confidence that I had built and to say, 'No, I don't need to work to stay relevant. I'm just going to work on the things that are interesting.' I developed the confidence to speak up in meetings with Martin Scorsese, fighting for a character that I believe in.
More here.
Photographs by Patrick Demarchelier for Glamour.