Northampton film-maker says women not getting 'exciting' roles

Cat White stars alongside acclaimed actor Celia Imrie in Fifty-four days, which she also wrote and directed

A film-maker has said that women are still struggling to get "exciting" parts in movies.

A short film by Cat White, who is from Northampton, will be shown at the town's film festival on Saturday to mark International Women's Day.

She said that younger female actors often get offered parts as someone's girlfriend or best friend.

She also believes that big blockbuster films are still more likely to be made by men.

White was in every play at Moulton School in the town and carried on with acting at university, but did not see herself as making a career from it.

Her early television credits as an actor include the BBC One soap Doctors, and Dracula, also a BBC One mini-series.

Cat White, seen here with Delroy Brown, wrote and directed the film as well as playing a major role

She told the BBC: "The parts, when you're a young girl, they're not the most exciting sometimes.

"You play a sort of girlfriend character, or a best friend character - I want more complexity, I wanted to see women and girls who are messy, and complicated, and brilliant."

So she realised that the only way forward was to tell stories "that might inspire and bring hope" herself.

The film was inspired by Cat White's love of open-water swimming, which helped her cope with grief

White's film Fifty-Four Days was conceived after she went through the suicide of a close friend and found that open-water swimming helped her cope.

She said: "I was in Oxford at the time and lived very near a lake and one morning, absolutely numb with grief for weeks on end, I thought 'I'm getting in that lake' and it started to unlock something.

"It became my routine and it became the thing that saved my life because, at that point, I was as low as I'd ever been."

In Fifty-Four days, she plays a character who takes to the water after the death of her father, and strikes up a friendship with an older woman played by Celia Imrie,

The film was made by White's own production company and she thinks that "indy, female-led production companies are the way forward, because we are the ones hiring all of the crew".

"You get to the blockbuster-level films and the statistics [of women film-makers] are still astounding, so it's about remaining hopeful because we are the next generation."