Add Decider on Google More On: Gloria Steinem Where to Watch Julianne Moore’s Gloria Steinem Movie, ‘The Glorias,’ In Honor of the Late Feminist Icon Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print ‘ on HBO Max, A Documentary About How Ms. Magazine Changed The Entire Conversation About Modern Women ‘The View’s Sunny Hostin Reveals She Would Bind Her Breasts When Interviewing With Men For Jobs: “They Just Looked Straight At My Chest” ‘And Just Like That’ Season 2 Episode 4 Recap: Dust Balls and Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem has passed away at 92, leaving behind a tremendous legacy of writing, activism, and feminist thought. She wrote for New York magazine, co-founded the feminist publication Ms. Magazine, advocated for reproductive rights, authored ten books, and campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, among other endeavors. There’s plenty of her work to read or revisit in the wake of her passing – and plenty of options if you’d like to see or hear this massively influential figure from throughout her decades of work.
Steinem received the biopic treatment in the 2020 film The Glorias, where she is played by four different actresses (including Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander) at four different ages. But she was such a visible and influential figure that there are plenty of movies and TV shows featuring her actual self, not just a fictionalized biopic version. Here’s a quick list of film and TV documentaries, as well as a few guest appearances and other notable depictions, that you can stream to get another look at this icon.
A documentary biopic released a decade and a half before her passing, the HBO film Gloria: In Her Own Words is probably the most concentrated dose of Steinem on film, telling her own story, with a focus on her work in the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It’s well worth a watch, though at just 62 minutes, it doesn’t always feel like it’s as expansive as it could be.
A three-hour documentary about a half-century’s worth of struggle for women’s equality actually began its life as a proposed film about… Gloria Steinem.
At the time, Steinem turned down the filmmakers’ idea because she was more interested in a movie that attempted to capture the full picture of the movement, rather than simply highlighting her contributions. (This might also explain why the eventual doc about her is only an hour.) There’s still plenty of Steinem included here as the project traces women’s rights in the U.S. from the 1950s through the remainder of the 20th century.
One of Steinem’s signature accomplishments was co-founding Ms. magazine, and this documentary feature from HBO explores the history of that publication, including interviews with Steinem, along with fellow founding editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Pat Carbine, and first editor Suzanne Braun Levine.
This anthology-style series covers a different current issue related to women in a variety of countries, including the U.S., Canada, Pakistan, Colombia, and Zambia. It’s presented and hosted by Steinem herself. The full series is also streaming for free on Tubi.
The seven-episode Netflix miniseries Live to Lead features 30-minute interviews with major thinkers and leaders, one per episode. The sixth episode focuses on Steinem.
In this FX miniseries from 2020, Rose Byrne plays Steinem in the 1970s, part of a group of second-wave feminists pitted against conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly (Cate Blanchett!) in their attempt to pass the Equal Rights Amendment preventing sexual discrimination. Blanchett receives a lot of focus, but Byrne’s Steinem still figures heavily into the story.
Back in 1963, Steinem got a gig as a Playboy Bunny at Hugh Hefner’s New York Playboy Club, and wrote about her experiences for Show magazine, exposing how these women are treated by employers and customers. This article was adapted into a TV movie in 1985, with a pre-Cheers Kirstie Alley playing Steinem. It doesn’t have an official streaming release, but like a lot of older TV movies that haven’t been preserved on home video, it is available in full on YouTube.
About once a decade in the 21st century, Steinem would drop in on a TV series, guest-starring as herself, a sign of her iconic status in American culture. Her last appearance in a fiction series was the second-season And Just Like That… episode “Alive!”
Steinem appears in Season 6, Episode 3 of The Good Wife and Season 2, Episode 13 of The L Word.
