Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer star discussed how she had been perceived as a young actress in the industry.

There was a time when I had a reputation of being difficult, she told the entertainment news outlet. Anyone that knows me knows it came from the fact that I always put in 100%. I never understood people who dont. Ive mellowed a bit in [my expectations of others] because I got burned out.

Gellars former Buffy co-star told THR that the actress was penalized when she tried to use her status at the top of the shows call sheet to create a better working environment for her colleagues.

We were working crazy hours, and a lot of things that got pushed werent necessarily safe or under the best conditions, he said. Sarah was always the first one to say, We agreed this was a 13-hour day and its hour 15 weve got to wrap, or, Hey, this shot doesnt seem safe, when nobody else would stick up for the cast and crew. I saw her get called a bitch, a diva, all these things that shes not just because she was taking the mantle of saying and doing the right thing.

Gellar herself has previously spoken about the atmosphere on the shows set, describing it as an extremely toxic working environment and a place where women were pitted against each other.

In her new projects, Gellar told THR in its January issue, she was doing her best to ensure young actors were working in safer spaces than she did in the 1990s.

I hope that Ive set up an infrastructure, a safety net for these actors that I didnt have, she said. My generation just didnt have that.

Women not allowed to be passionate

The often career-defining labeling of women in Hollywood as difficult is a longstanding issue that many actresses have spoken out about in the past.

Katherine Heiglwho has starred in movies including Knocked Up and 27 Dresses, and won an Emmy for her role in Greys Anatomyaddressed her reputation as being hard to work with in a 2021 interview with The Washington Post.  

I may have said a couple of things [people] didnt like, but then that escalated to shes ungrateful, then that escalated to shes difficult, and that escalated to shes unprofessional, the actress said. What is your definition of difficult? Somebody with an opinion that you dont like? Now, Im 42, and that s*** pisses me off.

Jennifer Lopez told THR in 2016 that she had gained a reputation that she didnt deserve, saying she still felt crippled to voice [her] opinion in male-dominated Hollywood.

Ive always been fascinated by how much more well-behaved we have to be than men, she said. I did get a moniker of being a diva, which I dont deserve. We [as women] are not allowed to have certain opinions or be a certain way, or be passionate.

Meanwhile, former The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Janet Hubert, addressing her falling out with co-star Will Smith during HBO Maxs reunion special, told Smith that his depiction of her at the time led to her losing everything.

Calling a black woman difficult in Hollywood is the kiss of death, she said. Its hard enough being a dark-skinned black woman in this business.

I speak in a monotone to be heard

Women being criticized as difficult, hard to work with, or opinionated isnt just confined to the entertainment industry, with the trope persisting outside of Hollywood as a widespread stereotype in the worlds of business, politics and beyond.

In a 2016 interview, Britains then-Prime Minister Theresa Maywho had been described by a former cabinet minister as a bloody difficult womansaid: If standing up for what you believe to be right makes you bloody difficult, then so be it.

While May embraced the description, however, many women are tired of being held to a double standard for voicing their opinions.

Women are always between a rock and a hard place when it comes to both communication styles and others attitudes toward them speaking up, Gwen Rhys, founder and CEO of U.K.-based Women in the City, told Fortune on Thursday.

As women progress in an organization, they become fewer in number and so they become the outliers. They arent part of the group think. Their views may well deviate from the accepted group norm. They are perceived as difficult, maybe even emotional.

Rhys said that to help overcome misconceptions and help prevent women from feeling afraid of speaking up, managers needed to ensure that they are given the opportunity to speak and for their views and concerns to be considered.

Its not true that women speak more than men in meetingsbut they often use more words and have more color or intonation, she noted. Personally, I have found that if l close down my deliveryuse fewer facial expressions, speak in more of a monotone, Im more likely to be heard.

Thaima Samman, president of the European Network for Women in Leadership, told Fortune in a call on Thursday that managers and companies needed to foster workplace cultures that were open and welcoming.

One element of the problem is the place of women in the workplace, its difficult for women to speak their mind, she said. Some people feel that women shouldnt have authoritythis is true of men but it can also be true of women. This can be addressed by having more and more women in leadership rolesit becomes the norm for womens ideas to be accepted.

Patricia Lizarraga, managing partner of Hypatia Capitala New York-based asset management firm focused on investing in women in leadershipsaid giving women more visibility in leadership was key to dismantling labels like difficult, as women leaders would no longer be an exception and thus would become harder to label.

Banish this language

Dr. Anino Emuwa, founder of Avandis Consulting and 100 Women @ Davos, told Fortune that it was down to bosses to eliminate outdated labels used to describe women in the workplace.

Using labels such as difficult or opinionated is a form of bias that can affect a womans rise in leadership, she said. The traditional socialized role of women is for them not to speak up, not to have a viewpoint and this is still reflected by many. Many women in certain organizations fall silent for fear of being labelled opinionated or difficult or quit their jobs to avoid confrontation.

She said women in middle management level roles often left companies where they felt they were excluded, or their contributions were not welcome.  

So to managers, firstly, banish this language, she advised. Would you use the same for a man who behaves in the same way? The person who challenges or questions may just be the person the organization needs to push forward from the old way of doing things into new opportunities.

Geraldine Gallacher, CEO of the London-based Executive Coaching Consultancy, said she had been made to feel as though she should moderate how assertive she was at work as she progressed up the corporate ladder.

I really experienced the double bind dilemma which senior women experiencethat they are judged more harshly for being dominant but theyre overlooked if theyre too quiet, she said.

Huge unconscious bias still remains which links leadership behaviors with stereotypically masculine behaviors such as dominance and self-promotion and associates women with more caring behaviors. Thats a real bind if you happen to be an assertive woman or indeed a caring man.

Snowden-McCray, a journalist who worked at the citys major daily, the Sun, and the now-shuttered alternative weekly, the Baltimore City Paper, knew Holofcener, a lawyer-activist who represented artists, from the progressive orbit they both inhabited.

She and Brandon Soderberg, a former Baltimore City paper editor, had tried to launch a new paper, the Baltimore Beat, but the publishing company that supported it pulled the plug. In 2020, Holofcener casually asked the two if they had any plans to resuscitate the publication.

After some more conversation, he surprised the two with an offer. The foundation, which he says had been making a hodge-podge of unfocused grants for decades, would essentially go out of business after giving the Beat $1 million.

I knew he was a nice guy, Snowden-McCray says. I didnt know he had access to a million dollars. The money was a complete shock to me.

His familys Lillian Holofcener Charitable Foundation joins a growing number of grantmakers that have put time limits on their existence so they can direct more money immediately to charities.

Not only did the Holofcener foundation decide to give away just about every cent it had but Adam Holofcener, 36, and the other relatives on the board did something even more rare by dedicating almost all of its remaining assets to a single project.

For Holofcener, the bold move was both an attempt to directly respond to the calls for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020 and an attempt to purge the family of gains it had made, which, as Holofcener sees it, came at the expense of Baltimores Black residents.

Holofceners grandfather amassed his wealth first through his insurance businesses and then through a successful chain of skiing and golfing equipment stores. Decades ago, the Holofceners left Baltimore for the suburbs, like thousands of other white families, leaving the city with a depleted tax base.

The large grant is an attempt to counter the idea that any giving is good giving, Holofcener says. A better way to give, he says, was for the foundation to give up control of how the money was used and leave those decisions to the Baltimore Beat staff.

It was very important that not only were we giving all the money away but that we were losing the money, he says. Its as important to disempower ourselves as it is to empower them.

In 2020, Holofcener wasnt even in a position to decide how to spend the familys remaining philanthropic assets. The sole board member, his uncle Rick, a serial entrepreneur, was halfway around the world, living with his family in Thailand. Adam brought up the idea with his sister Ashley, who lives in Florida, and with Ricks daughter Sydney, who lives in Tennessee.

Ashley says those discussions encouraged her to make a big bet.

Why cant we strike while the iron is hot, she says her family members told her. Theres a real opportunity for us to engage.

The problem was that none of the cousins actually had any say over how the family foundation doled out money. Rick had accepted that job years before, but he was not a hands-on philanthropist.

I was not in that business, he says.

The younger Holofceners found that their uncle was receptive to having them join the board. Upon joining, Adam wanted to push the family to take chances. He introduced them to a book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, by Edgar Villanueva, that advocates that philanthropists respond to the needs of grantees rather than dictate how they operate.

The reading, Rick says, was useful. Coming from a business background, the idea that a nonprofit could get a lump sum with no strings attached seemed counterintuitive. Steering the Holofceners limited remaining assets toward a single nonprofit, rather than a group of organizations, seemed to go against the grain of basic business advice: Spread your resources out in a portfolio of investments.

It was a little bit scary for me, Rick Holofcener says.

They did consider another option: creating a community-led fund that would have spread out grants to a number of nonprofits each year. But by making a single, eyebrow-raising grant, the Holofceners thought they might draw the attention of other donors and encourage them to give. The Beat reports that it has raised an additional $250,000 since the Holofcener gift.

Coming to the decision meant the Holofceners had to reorient their notion of success, Ashley says. She hopes the Baltimore Beat publishes for many years to come. But if it doesnt, the grant will have accomplished something important if it spurs other foundations to act boldly.

A win in our minds is breaking the cycle of how foundations and philanthropic organizations are typically managed today, she says.

More family foundations are considering whether to give more or even all of their assets, says Nicholas Tedesco, president of the National Center for Family Philanthropy.

As new generations of family members increasingly populate foundation boards, Tedesco predicts more grantmakers will begin to take a second look at how they give. Typically, he says, people who make a lot of money view it as a hard-earned asset and might resist giving up control over how charities use their grants. Their sons and daughters, however, are more likely to see their familys money as a gift to pass along to others.

Among the next generation of family philanthropy, we see more of a willingness to embrace risk and to move away from a posture of waiting for guaranteed results, he says.

In a letter from the editor published in the relaunched Beats inaugural edition in August, Snowden-McCray outlined the papers goals.

We wanted to give Black writers the opportunities to tell their own stories, she wrote. We wanted to help add depth to the stories that are told about Baltimore. We wanted to make a paper that reflected the joys the art created here, the celebrations held here, the lives lived here and sadness of the city.

But before the Holofceners agreed to cede control over their assets and help Snowden-McCray with her mission, they wanted a sense of confidence that the paper would be managed well, say both the family members and Snowden-McCray

Working for several months with Snowden-McCray and Soderberg, the papers co-founder, the family and the journalists fine-tuned their vision. The process, Soderberg says, was stress-free because they knew the money was coming; the time-out was simply to make sure the nonprofit paper would have a smooth rollout.

The foundation wasnt laying out preconditions or must-dos. Instead, the pause gave the paper and the family time to thoroughly nail down their plans.

The paper developed a comprehensive strategy for where it should deploy newspaper boxes so they would reach people who would benefit the most.

To keep operating costs in line, the refined business plan also called for a biweekly paper instead of a weekly, as originally planned. As a result of the extended planning, Snowden-McCray is optimistic about the papers future.

Everybody wants everything fast, she says. But I think slow cooking it will ultimately help us last.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Alex Daniels is a senior reporter at the Chronicle. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The AP and the Chronicle receive support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.