1980's:
 

1981 – Body Heat with Kathleen Turner took sex to new places as well as women’s roles in the movies.  Turner is allowed to be bold and devious in this movie.  Her entrance announces that she is the film’s center of power (of course because the movie is about sex).

1983 – Helena Bonham Carter premiered in a made for TV movie, A Pattern of Roses, which led her to be cast in A Room With a View in 1985, and then her first major role in 1986 in Lady Jane.  Even though she gives her audiences magnificent performances in her versatile roles, she has never won a major American film award.

1984 – Sally Field won Best Actress for Places in the Heart, where she plays a strong woman who keeps her family together after her husband dies.

1986 – Isabella Rossellini Blue Velvet – nominated for best picture

1987 – Cher won Best Actress in Moonstruck, where she plays a thirty-something star crossed lover willing to risk it all for true love.

1988 – Jodi Foster won Best Actress for The Accused, a movie in which she plays a woman named Sarah Tobias, who breaks up with her drug dealer boyfriend and goes out to a bar for a drink, scantily clad.  She ends up getting gang raped by a group of men who take her flirtations as an invitation for sex.  Jodi’s character shows that although a young woman may act inappropriately, even recklessly, she still has the right to say no and be heard.

1980 – William Friedkin’s Cruising (and others like it) in which gays are depicted as murderous and sadomasochistic spark riots. 

1982 – Casting for Arthur Hiller’s Making Love brings to light how Hollywood actors fear playing gay characters, thinking that doing do will ruin their careers.

1980s-1990s – Films emerge with lesbianism, which is deemed acceptable because it portrays women as intimate friends, which is not threatening to men.  These include Robert Towne’s Personal Best (1982), Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983), Stephen Spielberg’s The Color Purple (1985), Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991), and Jon Avnet’s Fried Green Tomatoes.  During this time period, few films about homosexual men emerge.