By Maggie Coughlan
10/03/2012 at 09:00 AM EDT
Let's hear it for the women!
Elle's Women in Hollywood issue (available on newsstands Oct. 16) celebrates nine women who have made significant contributions to the film industry.
This year's honorees are Sarah Jessica Parker, Octavia Spencer, Cate Blanchett, Kristen Wiig, Uma Thurman, Elle Fanning, Emma Watson, Shirley MacLaine and Susan Sarandon.
Here's a sneak peek at what Parker, Spencer, Watson and Fanning said about their personal lives, careers and making it as a woman in Hollywood:
Sarah Jessica Parker
"I don't love the idea of playing another woman who loves fashion and is slightly flawed in New York City," Parker says of future roles. "I loved
Sex and the City's Carrie [Bradshaw] and I don't want to do the poor man's version of her. And while those are often the lucrative things to do, it's more reason to look in the other direction."
Octavia Spencer
"Early on I had to stand up to a producer I won't say who, but he is famous, famous. He dressed me down in a crowded office. I told him right there in front of a hundred people, 'You don't know me well enough to use that tone,' " she says of standing up for herself. "And then I ! ran to the bathroom and cried like a baby. But he never addressed me that way again. And he is known as a yeller."
Emma Watson
"I just knew, from the moment I read
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that I was meant to play that role," she says of the character Hermione Granger. "I put one of the
Potter films on the other night. And it was amazing to me that I had done all of that. I have to remind myself every now and then."
Elle Fanning
"I can't really remember my life without movies," Fanning says of growing up in the spotlight. "I make movies the same way other kids play tennis or go to piano lessons. I'm trying to get better at what I want to do, just like other kids are trying to get better at what they want to do."