‘I was hoping to work more on this side of having babies’: Jessica Brown Findlay complains of struggling to find acting roles during pregnancy
Her acting career took off when she starred as rebellious aristocrat Lady Sybil Crawley in Downton Abbey.
But Jessica Brown Findlay, 35, complained of struggling to find work after becoming pregnant.
The actress, who starred in the hit ITV drama from 2010 to 2012, is expecting her first child with her husband, actor Ziggy Heath.
She said: “I was hoping to work more on this side of having babies, but you can’t. Insuring pregnant women on set is very difficult – and since Covid it has become even more difficult as you are considered an even higher risk.
‘I was hoping to work more on this side of having babies’: Jessica Brown Findlay, 35, complained she was now struggling to find work after becoming pregnant (pictured in September)
Jessica said even her voiceover work has dried up. She told the Sunday Times Culture magazine: ‘It’s shocking.
She also spoke of the “crushing depth of shame” she felt when private nude photos of her and others appeared online in an iCloud leak in 2014.
The actress said the incident would have been handled differently after the #MeToo movement.
She added: “The women would not have lost job opportunities and traded on the dark web for a month before being released to the public because bodies are commodities.”
Breakout role: The star’s acting career took off when she played rebellious aristocrat Lady Sybil Crawley in Downton Abbey between 2010 and 2012 (pictured)
Jessica confirmed her pregnancy during a red carpet appearance at the closing ceremony of the Venice International Film Festival in September.
The actress previously revealed she had undergone four rounds of IVF treatment in hopes of having her first child, as she shared her fertility journey with her social media followers in a candid post earlier This year.
She shared insight into her fertility struggles with a candid Instagram post to celebrate International Women’s Day, along with a video of herself applying hormone injections.
In the post, Jessica shared a time-lapse video of her injecting the hormones into her stomach, which usually increases the number of eggs produced by the ovaries.
Expectant mother: Jessica confirmed her pregnancy during a red carpet appearance at the closing ceremony of the Venice International Film Festival in September (pictured)
The star posted an impassioned caption reminding her followers that “their bodies are not the enemy”, while revealing that she is in her fourth round of IVF treatment.
She wrote: ‘Happy International Women’s Day! We do hard things and then we go dancing.
“IVF made me realize even more about all that women are capable of and what we can accomplish while going through pain and heart breaks.
‘Your body is not the enemy. To like. No matter what. I send love and support to all the women I’ve met and all the ones I haven’t, but I know what this is.
Jessica married husband Ziggy in a low-key wedding in 2020 with just 30 guests in attendance due to Covid restrictions, three years after they met on the Hulu drama Harlots.
Open: The actress married actor husband Ziggy Heath in September 2020, after they met while filming the Hulu series Harlots in 2017 (pictured together in January 2020)
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