All the women who have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct so far
Not long ago, Harvey Weinstein was one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. But one by one, women who encountered him over his decades in the entertainment industry are speaking out about the ways he allegedly sexually harassed or assaulted them. Here is the growing list of women who have publicly accused him in the past week, when reports from credible news outlets began to be published, resulting in his being fired from his company and losing his wife. He has continued to deny most of it.
Cara Delevingne
Model, actress, and newly minted YA author Cara Delevingne added her name to the ever-growing list of Weinstein accusers. Among the details was Weinstein’s insistence that she’d never get roles playing straight characters if she decided to be with women in public, Delevingne shared. She also described what happened when she was summoned to his room, after they met with a director at Weinstein’s hotel. “When I arrived, I was relieved to find another woman in his room and thought immediately I was safe,” she wrote on Instagram. “He asked us to kiss and she began some sort of advances upon his direction.” After trying to distract him by singing, she said she had to leave, then, “He walked me to the door and stood in front of it and tried to kiss me on the lips.” She added that she was hesitant to speak out because of how it would affect his family.
Gwyneth Paltrow
When the New York Times published its initial report on Weinstein’s alleged history of sexual harassment on Oct. 5, Ashley Judd was the only big-name Hollywood actress who would go on the record about being an alleged victim of the movie mogul. However, five days later, the newspaper followed up with a second, more damning article in which Gwyneth Paltrow, 45, claimed to be a victim too. She said that at 22, when she was just starting out and Weinstein hired her for the lead in the Jane Austen adaptation Emma, he called her to his suite at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for a work meeting, which led to his placing his hands on her and suggesting they head to the bedroom for massages. “I was a kid … I was petrified,” said Paltrow, who came from a known acting family. She escaped and told her boyfriend at the time, Brad Pitt, who had words with Weinstein. Paltrow said that Weinstein then screamed at her, warning her not to tell anyone else about his come-on, leaving her fearful that she’d be fired from Emma. (She said that she also told a few friends, family members, and her agent.) Paltrow continued to work professionally with Weinstein, who helped her develop her career and win an Oscar for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, which was produced by his then-company Miramax.
Angelina Jolie
The second New York Times piece was a one-two punch. Not only did megastar Paltrow go on the record; so did 42-year-old Angelina Jolie, another A-lister, Academy Award winner, Pitt ex, and part of a known acting family. She claimed that in the late ’90s, around the release of Playing by Heart, Weinstein made unwanted advances on her in a hotel room. “I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did,” she told the paper. “This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.”
Asia Argento
Italian actress and director Asia Argento claims she shared a terrifying and heartbreaking encounter with Weinstein in the late ’90s, when one of Weinstein’s producers invited her to a Miramax company party at the Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc on the French Riviera. It turned out to be a party of one: Weinstein. He praised her work, excused himself from the room, and returned “wearing a bathrobe and holding a bottle of lotion,” she told the New Yorker. It escalated when Weinstein “pulled her skirt up, forced her legs apart, and performed oral sex on her as she repeatedly told him to stop.” Argento said that though she told him no, she eventually gave up and feigned enjoyment in hopes that it would end the assault. “I was not willing. I said, ‘No, no, no.’ … It’s twisted. A big fat man wanting to eat you. It’s a scary fairy tale,” she said, adding, “After the rape, he won.” Argento re-created the experience in her film Scarlet Diva, to which Weinstein commented, “Ha, ha, very funny,” saying he was “sorry for whatever happened.” Among Argento’s ardent supporters is boyfriend Anthony Bourdain, who tweeted in support, “@AsiaArgento I am proud and honored to know you. You just did the hardest thing in the world.”
Ashley Judd
Ashley Judd, who worked with Weinstein on Kiss the Girls in 1996, went on record telling the New York Times that the producer propositioned her in a hotel room in Beverly Hills around that time. Weinstein allegedly asked if he could give her a massage or if she would watch him shower. “How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein,” Judd recalled thinking. “I said no, a lot of ways, a lot of times, and he always came back at me with some new ask. … It was all this bargaining, this coercive bargaining.” Weinstein denied the allegations, saying, “I never laid a glove on her.”
Heather Graham
After Tuesday’s New York Times and New Yorker pieces, 47-year-old actress Heather Graham felt ready to share her experience in Variety. Graham claimed that in the early 2000s — after she had already appeared in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Boogie Nights — she had an uncomfortable meeting with the movie maker. He showed her a stack of scripts, she told the mag, and said that he wanted her to be in one of his movies. Then “he mentioned that he had an agreement with his wife. He could sleep with whomever he wanted when he was out of town. … I walked out of the meeting feeling uneasy. There was no explicit mention that to star in one of those films I had to sleep with him, but the subtext was there.” Graham, who never ended up working with Weinstein, gave kudos to Judd for “heroically” being the first to go on the record. However, she now regrets not speaking out earlier, saying, “If I had spoken up a decade ago, would I have saved countless women from the same experience I had or worse?”
Mira Sorvino
The 50-year-old actress Mira Sorvino — daughter of actor Paul Sorvino — won an Oscar with the help of Weinstein, whose then-company Miramax produced 1995’s Mighty Aphrodite. That same year, Sorvino claims, they were at the Toronto International Film Festival, and she, like many others, found herself in a hotel room with the exec. “He started massaging my shoulders, which made me very uncomfortable, and then tried to get more physical, sort of chasing me around,” she recalled to the New Yorker. She ended up telling Weinstein, who was then married to his former assistant Eve Chilton, that it was against her religion to date married men. While that worked at the time, a few weeks later Weinstein called her to say he was coming to her apartment and hung up. “I freaked out,” she recalled, and she phoned a male friend to come over and pose as her boyfriend. Sorvino later complained to a female employee at Miramax about Weinstein’s harassment, and she felt that her speaking out had hurt her career. “There may have been other factors, but I definitely felt iced out and that my rejection of Harvey had something to do with it,” she said.
Rosanna Arquette
In the ’90s, Rosanna Arquette was summoned to a hotel room to meet Weinstein. He answered the door in his robe, and then allegedly grabbed the actress’s hand and pulled it toward his visibly erect penis. Arquette exclaimed that she would “never do that,” she told the New Yorker, and her career suffered. “He made things very difficult for me for years,” she said.
Lucia Evans
Lucia Evans met the famed producer when she was an aspiring actress in 2004, and shortly after, she agreed to meet him at the Miramax offices to do a reading. It was there that she claimed he assaulted her. “He forced me to perform oral sex on him,” she alleged to the New Yorker in detail. “I tried to get away, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t want to kick him or fight him. … He’s a big guy. He overpowered me.” Afterward, she claimed, he acted like nothing had happened. “Everything was designed to make me feel comfortable before it happened. And then the shame in what happened was also designed to keep me quiet,” she says. Weinstein has not addressed her accusation.
Emily Nestor
Weinstein allegedly propositioned Emily Nestor — who worked as a temporary front-desk assistant in 2014 — on her second day. Summoning her to a hotel room, the producer reportedly boasted about famous actresses he had slept with and offered to help her with her career … for a price. “He said, ‘You know, we could have a lot of fun,’” Nestor recalled to the New Yorker. “I could put you in my London office, and you could work there and you could be my girlfriend.” Nestor declined and recounted the incident to a friend, who reported it to the Weinstein Company’s human resources department. While no assault had occurred, she said, she felt “harassed and frightened.”
Louisette Geiss
In 2008, actress and screenwriter Louisette Geiss went to the Sundance Film Festival to pitch a movie and landed a meeting with Weinstein that initially seemed promising — until it took an unfortunately familiar turn. After he excused himself to go to the bathroom, “he returned in a robe with the front open, buck-naked,” Geiss said at a news conference. He told her to continue pitching as he got into his hot tub, and then, “when I finished my pitch, he asked me to watch him masturbate. I told him I was leaving. He quickly got out of the hot tub. As I went to get my purse to leave, he grabbed my forearm and pulled me to his bathroom and pleaded with me to watch him masturbate. My heart was racing and I was very scared.” Geiss is being represented by attorney Gloria Allred.
Lauren Madden
Lauren Madden was a production assistant at Miramax for 10 years, allegedly suffering abuse under Weinstein starting in 1991, when the producer asked her for massages at hotels in Dublin and London. “It was so manipulative,” Madden told the Times. “You consistently question yourself — am I the one who is the problem?” Madden’s friend and former colleague told the newspaper that Madden once locked herself in Weinstein’s hotel bathroom, sobbing.
Louise Godbold
Louise Godbold currently runs the nonprofit Echo Parenting & Education, but back in the ’90s she was summoned to Weinstein’s office for a meeting that started with an office tour and quickly turned dark. “The details of what I have learned was not unique to me are out there now — the office tour that became an occasion to trap me in an empty meeting room, the begging for a massage, his hands on my shoulders as I attempted to beat a retreat … all while not wanting to alienate the most powerful man in Hollywood,” Godbold wrote in a blog post. Later, Weinstein contacted the mutual friend who had put them in touch to ensure that she wouldn’t “make a complaint about his behavior” because, he allegedly said, “I don’t need that kind of publicity.”
Liza Campbell
Campbell is a British author and was a script reader for Miramax; she worked on titles such as Shakespeare in Love and The Usual Suspects in the mid-’90s. When the work dried up, Weinstein invited her to his hotel for a meeting. “I could hear him moving around and suddenly the sound of bath taps running. ‘What do you say we both jump in the bath?’ he hollered. I could hear the thump of shoes being taken off and felt shocked that the meeting had turned sleazy,” Campbell wrote in an article for the Sunday Times, adding that she was afraid of the mogul. “Harvey Weinstein is huge, a pocked bullock, like a hitman from The Sopranos.” She threatened him if he dared to return to the room naked. “I won’t shield an abuser out of my own shame about what happened, because that makes the shame settle within me; and it’s not mine, it’s his,” she wrote.
Romola Garai
Romola Garai, a British actress known for starring in Atonement and the BBC series The Hour, was just 18 years old when she was allegedly summoned to Weinstein’s room at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he answered the door in his robe. “I remember the feeling of seeing him opening the door in the dressing gown and thinking, ‘Oh God, this is a casting couch,’” she told the New York Times. “But I guess it’s now only as a much older woman that I understood what it meant. At the time I understood myself to be a commodity and that my value in the industry rested almost exclusively on the way I looked, and I didn’t really think of myself to be any more than that.” Adding that she left feeling violated, Garai said the experience was humiliating and “an abuse of power,” noting that it was indicative of Weinstein’s approach to women in the film industry, putting female actors into “humiliating situations” to prove “he had the power to do it.”
Lauren O’Connor
Lauren O’Connor, one of the women named in the Times report, worked with the Weinstein Company, and in 2015, she bravely dared to write a memo about the company’s toxic working environment. In it, she detailed Weinstein’s harassment of women, how he coerced women who worked for him, and famously detailed the power imbalance between the two, saying, “I am a 28-year-old woman trying to make a living and a career. Harvey Weinstein is a 64-year-old, world famous man and this is his company. The balance of power is me: 0, Harvey Weinstein: 10.” O’Connor was expected to have casting discussions with actresses after Weinstein would set up “private appointments” with them, prompting O’Connor to express her fear that she and other female employees were being used to “facilitate liaisons with ‘vulnerable women who hope he will get them work.’” Weinstein offered her a settlement in 2015.
Zelda Perkins
In 1998, Zelda Perkins was a production assistant who was also routinely subject to Weinstein’s horrifying behavior, including inappropriate requests and hotel room invites — and she was concerned about the treatment of her female co-workers too. When she threatened to take his behavior public and sue unless he changed his ways, a Miramax lawyer reportedly negotiated a settlement to keep her quiet, according to the New York Times.
Emma de Caunes
French actress Emma de Caunes, who was already established and in her early 30s, met Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival, but the harassment occurred a few months later, when she met him for lunch, according to the account she gave the New Yorker. Weinstein talked about an upcoming movie he was producing, with a prestige director, a strong female role, and a French filming location, but the project had a name he couldn’t remember. Did she want to go with him to his room, where he could get the book it was based on to give to her? She said no at first, but she finally gave in to his pleading. They went to the room, where she answered a phone call, and he went into the bathroom … with the door open and the water running. “I was, like, What the f***, is he taking a shower?” she said. Weinstein emerged naked with an erection, then ordered her to lie on the bed, noting that many other women had done so. “I was very petrified,” de Caunes said. “But I didn’t want to show him that I was petrified, because I could feel that the more I was freaking out, the more he was excited. It was like a hunter with a wild animal. The fear turns him on,” she recounted. She remembered that as she went to leave in disgust, Weinstein said, “We haven’t done anything! It’s like being in a Walt Disney movie!” De Caunes’s response: “I looked at him and I said — it took all my courage — but I said, ‘I’ve always hated Walt Disney movies.’ And then I left. I slammed the door.” Still, Weinstein allegedly spent the next few hours calling de Caunes and offering her gifts, even though he also kept telling her that nothing had happened between them.
Jessica Barth
Jessica Barth is an actress who met Weinstein at a Golden Globes after-party in 2011, then was invited by him to a business meeting at the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills. Once she arrived, the New Yorker reported, she was told by Weinstein over the phone to go up to his room, so they could talk in private. He insisted that they would “talk career stuff.” But when she got there, Weinstein had ordered champagne and sushi. They talked, and though he did offer her a part in one of his movies, he also demanded something from her. “So, what would happen if, say, we’re having some champagne and I take my clothes off and you give me a massage?” she said he asked. “And I’m, like, ‘That’s not going to happen.’” Barth started to leave, and Weinstein angrily told her that to “compete with Mila Kunis,” she needed to lose weight. He also promised her a meeting with one of the female executives in his company, presumably to keep her from talking.
Lauren Sivan
Lauren Sivan was working as an anchor at a New York City TV station when Weinstein offered her a tour of a local restaurant in which he was an investor. “That’s when he cornered me in this vestibule and leaned in and tried to kiss me, which I immediately rebuffed, and said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, I had no idea what this was, I’m sorry, I have a very serious boyfriend and I’m not interested,’” Sivan told the Huffington Post. “I thought it would end there.” But it didn’t. “That’s when he blocked the entrance,” Sivan continued, “and said, ‘Just stand there and be quiet.’” Weinstein, she claimed, then exposed himself and masturbated in front of her, ejaculating into a nearby potted plant. He called her the next day and said he “had a great time last night,” and he asked for her to meet him again. She declined. The incident happened a decade ago, but Sivan tweeted over the weekend that she felt she could only speak out about it now. “For those asking why I waited?” Sivan wrote. “YOU try telling that story 10yrs ago. Only possible now because of women with bigger names far braver than me.”
For those asking why I waited?
YOU try telling that story 10yrs ago. Only possible now because of women with bigger names far braver than me— Lauren Sivan (@LaurenSivan) October 7, 2017
Katherine Kendall
Weinstein invited Katherine Kendall to a 1993 screening, then said he needed to stop by his house to get something, she told the New York Times. After he went to the bathroom, he came out in a robe and requested a massage from her. “Everybody does it,” he said. She did not, but Weinstein wouldn’t give up. “He literally chased me,” she said. “He wouldn’t let me pass him to get to the door.” Weinstein pleaded, could she at least show him her breasts? Not surprisingly, she said no.
Tomi-Ann Roberts
As a college student aspiring to act in 1984, Tomi-Ann Roberts worked a waitress job and Weinstein was a customer. He encouraged her to audition for him, gave her scripts, and asked her to meet with him at his hotel to talk about a movie, she recounted in the second New York Times story. She did, and he was naked in the bathtub when she arrived. He told her that if she was OK “getting naked in front of him,” she would give a better audition. Roberts passed on the purported opportunity.
Judith Godrèche
Weinstein also tried to get French actress Judith Godrèche to give him a massage. He asked her to breakfast at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival after he bought her movie Ridicule. A female executive from Miramax came along too, but after the other woman left, Godrèche told the New York Times, Weinstein invited Godrèche up to his room to talk about the film’s marketing. Once they were there, the mogul asked her to give him a massage; it was a regular thing for Americans, he reportedly told her. “The next thing I know, he’s pressing against me and pulling off my sweater,” Godrèche said. She managed to leave and was told by the woman who had breakfasted with them not to say anything about the incident.
Dawn Dunning
In 2003, Dawn Dunning, another woman named in the New York Times, was an actress working as a waitress in a nightclub when she struck up a friendly, mentor-mentee relationship with Weinstein. He gave her and her boyfriend tickets to a Broadway show and met with her for meals to talk about her movies. When Weinstein’s assistant arranged for Dunning to meet him at his hotel for another meal, she accepted. She was told to go straight to his room, because he was running late. He welcomed her in, wearing his bathrobe, and offered her contracts for his next three movies — right then and there — if she would have three-way sex with him. Dunning laughed because she thought it was a joke, to which Weinstein responded, “You’ll never make it in this business. This is how the business works.”
Kate Beckinsale
When she was just a 17-year-old aspiring actress, Beckinsale had a meeting with Weinstein at a luxe hotel. “I assumed it would be in a conference room which was very common. When I arrived, reception told me to go to his room,” she claimed in an Instagram post. “He opened the door in his bathrobe. I was incredibly naive and young and it did not cross my mind that this older, unattractive man would expect me to have any sexual interest in him. After declining alcohol and announcing that I had school in the morning I left, uneasy but unscathed.” She added, “A few years later he asked me if he had tried anything with me in that first meeting. I realized he couldn’t remember if he had assaulted me or not.”
Zo? Brock
As a 23-year-old model, Brock encountered Weinstein when she was seated next to him at a dinner during the Cannes Film Festival, she wrote in a blog post. He was completely professional and, at first, she just assumed he was a struggling filmmaker. She eventually found out who he was and her group of friends hung out with Weinstein and his assistant afterward. But at some point during the evening, the groups were separated and Brock, who was ushered into a car with the mogul and his two friends, was told that everyone was headed to the same place, and then told there had been a change of plans and that everyone was going to Weinstein’s hotel instead. The others never arrived, Weinstein’s friends disappeared, and she found herself alone with him. She claims that he took off his clothes and requested a massage and, when she said no, offered to give her one and began rubbing her shoulders. “I shrugged Harvey’s hands off me, ran into the bathroom and locked the door. Harvey chased me, d***, balls and all, and banged on the door with his fists, pleading with me to come out.” When she yelled at him, he said, “You don’t like me because I’m fat.” He let her leave and the next day, he sent her 13 red roses. According to her essay, the card read, “Thank you for last night.”
Léa Seydoux
“He invited me to come to his hotel room for a drink,” Seydoux, a French actress and Bond girl, wrote in an essay for the Guardian. Seydoux had met Weinstein at a fashion show, and he was considering her for a role, he reportedly told her. She was suspicious. “We went up together. It was hard to say no because he’s so powerful,” she recalled. “All the girls are scared of him. Soon, his assistant left and it was just the two of us. That’s the moment where he started losing control.” As Seydoux explained it, “We were talking on the sofa when he suddenly jumped on me and tried to kiss me. I had to defend myself. He’s big and fat, so I had to be forceful to resist him. I left his room, thoroughly disgusted. I wasn’t afraid of him, though. Because I knew what kind of man he was all along.” Over the years, Seydoux wrote that she saw Weinstein hit on another young actress and exhibit other deplorable behavior.
Laura Madden
The New York Times reported that Madden, who once worked for the Weinstein Company, was also pressured to give him massages at hotels in both London and Dubai. “It was so manipulative,” she said of the way Weinstein allegedly made her feel like she was the only one rejecting his requests. “You constantly question yourself — am I the one who is the problem?”
Florence Darel
Weinstein allegedly made repeated attempts to have a sexual relationship with French actress Darel in the ‘90s, including once when he flat-out told her he wanted to have sex with her in a hotel room in Paris where his wife at the time, Eve Chilton, was in the next room. Weinstein had summoned Darel to a meeting in his room. They had recently met at the premiere of a movie in which she starred and he had bought. Although she was skeptical of the reason she was called to the hotel, her agent insisted that she go, Darel recounted in Le Parisien. “[Weinstein] started to tell me that he found me very attractive and wanted to have relations with me,” Darel told the newspaper. “I told him I was very in love with my companion. He replied that didn’t bother him at all and offered to have me be his mistress a few days a year. That way we could continue to work together. Basically, it was ‘If you want to continue in America, you have to go through me.’” Nevertheless, Darel rushed out and Weinstein later acted as if nothing had happened, she told People. “What happened to me may not be illegal but it was inappropriate. Very inappropriate,” she added.
Lauren Holly
Actress Lauren Holly shared her Weinstein story with The Social, a Canadian talk show. She said that in the late ’90s, when she was in her 30s, she was invited to meet with Weinstein at a hotel to talk about future ventures. During the meeting, Weinstein excused himself, returned in a robe, and continued talking business after dropping the robe, using the toilet, and showering in front of Holly. When she turned down his invitation for a massage, Holly said, he threatened her, saying she needed to “keep him as [her] ally” and that it would be a “bad decision” if she left the room — so Holly “pushed him and ran.” When she told others, she was advised to “keep [her] mouth shut.”
Lena Headey
Lena Headey, of Game of Thrones, shared her uncomfortable encounters with Weinstein on Twitter. Years after making a suggestive comment to her during the Venice Film Festival one year, Weinstein invited her to meet him in L.A., where he insisted that he had a script for her up in his room. Headey recounted the scary elevator ride up to his floor, where she made it clear that she wasn’t interested in anything but work — which she said made him furious. After his key card didn’t work, Weinstein became enraged and marched Headey through the hotel lobby “by grabbing and holding tightly to the back of my arm,” paid for her car at the valet, and whispered in her ear, “Don’t tell anyone about this. Not your manager, not your agent.”
— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) October 17, 2017
Eva Green
Bond girl and Penny Dreadful star Eva Green’s mother, French actress Marlene Jobert, told Europe 1 radio that Green was sexually harassed by Weinstein for two years. Jobert echoed the story many other accusers shared, with Weinstein using the promise of work to lure Green into his trap: “He’d given her a script with a beautiful key role it. And as his office was also in his hotel suite, they’d go up and then. … He promised her, like the others, that he’d favorize their careers in exchange for sexual favors.” Green later issued a statement, saying, “I met him for a business meeting in Paris at which he behaved inappropriately and I had to push him off. I got away without it going further, but the experience left me shocked and disgusted.”
Angie Everhart
Model and actress Angie Everhart detailed a horrifying experience that she said took place at the Venice Film Festival. Everhart called in to the Frosty, Heidi, and Frank morning radio show on Los Angeles station KLOS and shared that she had been sleeping on a boat and awoke to Weinstein standing over her. “All of a sudden he takes his pants down and starts doing his stuff. And he’s blocking the door, I can’t get out. … I don’t know how to say this on the radio, but [he] finishes on the carpet on the floor,” Everhart said. “It’s just disgusting. And then he says, ‘You know, you’re a really nice girl, you shouldn’t tell anybody about this.’”
Minka Kelly
Former Parenthood star Minka Kelly shared her own disgusting Weinstein encounter, which she said happened after she met the producer at an industry party. Though he attempted to set the meeting in a hotel room, Kelly refused, so they met at a hotel restaurant instead. After excusing his assistant, Kelly wrote, “he said, ‘I know you were feeling what I was feeling when we met the other night’ and then regaled me with offers of a lavish life filled with trips around the world on private planes etc. IF I would be his girlfriend. Or, ‘We could just keep this professional.’” When Kelly declined his offer, Weinstein told her, “Fine. I trust you won’t tell anyone about this.”
Lysette Anthony
In an essay for the Sunday Times, British actress Lysette Anthony alleged that Weinstein not only raped her 15 years ago but terrorized her for years afterward. After meeting him in the early ’80s, Anthony said, she and Weinstein were friendly, until he tried to attack her one day in his rented home. After she escaped, he stalked her at her home. At one point, Anthony relented and let him in. “He pushed me inside and rammed me up against the coat rack in my tiny hall and started fumbling at my gown. He was trying to kiss me and shove inside me. It was disgusting,” she wrote, adding that Weinstein continued to harass and proposition her until 2002.
Paula Wachowiak
Paula Wachowiak worked as a production assistant on Weinstein’s first film in the early ’80s, and as she told the Buffalo News, he exposed himself to her when she was trying to do her job. When she went to his hotel room to deliver checks so that he could sign them, Weinstein allegedly answered the door in nothing but a towel, which he let drop. He asked for a massage, to which she replied, “That’s not in my job description,” prompting Weinstein to remind her what “an opportunity” her job was. Later on the set, she said, Weinstein asked her, “So, was seeing me naked the highlight of your internship?” Her response? “Actually, Harvey, you disgust me.”
Sarah Smith
Sarah Smith (the pseudonym used by a former Miramax employee) told the Daily Mail that Weinstein raped her in the company’s London offices in 1992. She said she was alone when Weinstein went to the basement and called her downstairs, where she found him naked. “He just ripped my clothes away and pushed me, threw me down. Then … I kept shouting, ‘No! Stop!’ and tried to push him off. But he forced himself on me,” she said. When he finished, he told her, “Get out!” Smith didn’t tell her husband about it until news of Weinstein’s misdeeds blanketed the press, saying, “I just felt mortified and ashamed — and that no one would believe me.” Her story, along with Lysette Anthony’s, has prompted an investigation by Scotland Yard.
Sarah Polley
Actress, writer, and director Sarah Polley was just 19 when she was summoned to meet with Weinstein while working on the Miramax film Guinevere. As she recalled in an op-ed for the New York Times, Polley’s publicist refused to leave her side during the meeting, but it didn’t help. “He told me, in front of the publicist and a co-worker beside him, that a famous star, a few years my senior, had once sat across from him in the chair I was in now. Because of his ‘very close relationship’ with this actress, she had gone on to play leading roles and win awards. If he and I had that kind of ‘close relationship,’ I could have a similar career. ‘That’s how it works,’ I remember him telling me. The implication wasn’t subtle.” Polley rebuffed his advances and escaped unscathed.
Melissa Sagemiller
Actress Melissa Sagemiller also spoke up, telling HuffPost about numerous attempts Weinstein made to corner her. While she was starring in the 2000 film Get Over It, Sagemiller recounted, Weinstein tried to coax her into his hotel room after a lunch meeting; demanded that she meet him in his room to go over the script and attempted his massage routine; and ordered that she be delivered to his private plane after shooting wrapped. When she rebuffed his advances, Sagemiller said, Weinstein told her, “Well, Renée did it and Charlize did it and this other actress did it. Don’t you want your career to be more than just this little teen film?” (Zellweger and Theron have yet to comment.)
Natalie Mendoza
Australian actress Natalie Mendoza shared in a Facebook post that she encountered Weinstein in 2002 while under a three-picture deal with Miramax — and rebuffed his advances. “I might have told Mr W mid-script ‘meeting’ after he sent his assistant out that I’d punch him if he didn’t take his hands off me,” she wrote. “Shook all the way home but high-fived myself for knowing my self worth in my early 20s. I knew my first film would be my last after that and I was more than OK about it.”
Alice Evans
Actress Alice Evans detailed how turning down Weinstein’s advances hurt her career and also that of her then-boyfriend, and now husband, actor Ioan Gruffudd, in an essay for the Telegraph. The Vampire Diaries star wrote that Weinstein asked her to accompany him to a hotel bathroom while in Cannes in 2002. “Just go. I’m right behind you. I want to touch your tits. Kiss you a little,” he allegedly said. Evans declined. Weinstein told her, “Let’s hope it all works out for your boyfriend.” The next day, Gruffudd lost out on a role he’d auditioned for in a Weinstein film, and neither was considered for a Weinstein project ever again.
Vu Thu Phuong
In 2008, Vietnamese model and actress Vu Thu Phuong was under consideration for a role in Shanghai, a historical drama starring John Cusack. When she was essentially cut from the film, Phuong agreed to meet with Weinstein at a hotel to discuss future roles. “Everything suddenly turned dark when I saw Mr. Harvey Weinstein standing before me with only a towel around his waist, smiling,” she wrote on Facebook. It got worse, she said, when Weinstein offered to teach her how to do sex scenes. “I can teach you, don’t worry. Many stars have also been through this,” Phuong recalled Weinstein telling her. “Just treat this as necessary experiences so that you’ll have a stronger foundation in the future.” As a result, Phuong said, she quit Hollywood.
Chelsea Skidmore
Comedian Chelsea Skidmore told The Washington Post that she’d had four run-ins with Weinstein in which he asked her for a massage, masturbated in front of her, exposed himself, and tried to coerce her into sex with other women — one of whom tried to convince Skidmore to participate by saying, “Oh, but he’s helped out so many girls.” Of Weinstein, Skidmore said, “He had just a very forceful way of going about things. He forces himself on you, talks you into it and doesn’t leave you with an option.”
Lina Esco
Actress and director Lina Esco — who helmed the film Free The Nipple, and has had roles in Flaked and Kingdom — told The Washington Post about Weinstein’s proposition to her. Esco says Weinstein told her, “I think we should see a movie in the theater, like back in the day, and we should kiss.” She went on to explain, “He tried to insinuate that everything would be easier for me if I went along.”
Trish Goff
As the fashion industry began to speak up about Weinstein, model Trish Goff told The New York Times about a 2003 lunch with Weinstein that quickly went awry. “Then he started asking me if I had a boyfriend, and if we had an open relationship. I said I wasn’t interested in an open relationship, but he was relentless, and I kept trying to shut that down and move on,” she said. “Then he started putting his hands on my legs, and I said, ‘Can you stop doing that?’ When we finally stood up to go, he really started groping me, grabbing my breasts, grabbing my face and trying to kiss me. I kept saying, ‘Please stop, please stop, but he didn’t until I managed to get back into the public space. The horrible thing is, as a model, it wasn’t that unusual to be in a weird situation where a photographer or someone feels they have a right to your body.”
Mia Kirshner
Canadian actress Mia Kirshner — whose credits include The L Word and The Black Dhalia — took a different tack in her accusations against Weinstein. In an op-ed for the Globe and Mail, she wrote about her “ordeal” in a hotel room with the producer. “He attempted to treat me like chattel that could be purchased with the promise of work in exchange for being his disposable orifice,” she wrote.
Erika Rosenbaum
Canadian actress Erika Rosenbaum talked with CBC show The Current about her Weinstein encounters, which spanned three meetings, during which he allegedly asked her for a massage after she turned him down for sex, tried to get intimate with her at his office, and later, assaulted her during the Toronto International Film Festival. “He grabs me by — he holds me by the back of the neck and faces me to the mirror, and very quietly tells me that he just wants to look at me,” she recalled. “And he starts to masturbate standing behind me. And I stood there and I did nothing. I think I was just too shocked to move or say anything… He really took something from me.”
Tara Subkoff
Actress, director, and designer Tara Subkoff claimed she had been harassed and subsequently blackballed by Weinstein in the ‘90s. While at a premiere party, Subkoff told Variety, “[Harvey] motioned for me to come over to him, and then grabbed me to sit me on his lap. I was so surprised and shocked I couldn’t stop laughing because it was so awkward. But then I could feel that he had an erection.” When Subkoff declined to follow Weinstein outside at his behest, he “implied that if I did not comply with doing what he asked me to do that I would not get the role that I had already been informally offered.” Subkoff’s career was effectively derailed when she was suddenly labeled “too difficult to work with.”
Sophie Dix
Sophie Dix, a British actress, said she was just 22 when Weinstein extended an invitation for her to meet with him at the Savoy Hotel to watch footage of a film she was in. “As soon as I was in there, I realized it was a terrible mistake,” Dix told The Guardian. “I got to the hotel room, I remember talk of a massage and I thought that was pretty gross. I think he showed me his big back and I found that pretty horrid. Then before I knew it, he started trying to pull my clothes off and pin me down and I just kept saying, ‘No, no, no.’ But he was really forceful. I remember him pulling at my trousers and stuff and looming over me and I just sort of —I am a big, strong girl and I bolted . . . ran for the bathroom and locked the door.” When Dix eventually opened the door, Weinstein was “just there facing the door, masturbating, so I quickly closed the door again and locked it. Then when I heard room service come to the door, I just ran.”
Sarah Ann Masse
Actress, comedian, and writer Sarah Ann Masse was working as a nanny in New York in 2008 when she was asked to interview with Weinstein for a potential job caring for his three children (with ex-wife Eve Chilton). Masse met with Weinstein assistants for pre-interviews, then finally went to meet him at his Connecticut home… where she said he answered the door in his undershirt and underwear. When the bizarre interview was over, Masse said Weinstein “gave me this really tight, close hug that lasted for quite a long period of time… Then he told me he loved me. I left right after that.” She didn’t get the job.
Lupita Nyong’o
“I have felt sick in the pit of my stomach,” Lupita Nyong’o wrote in an essay for The New York Times citing two occasions she was harassed by Weinstein. During the first, she was still a student at the Yale School of Drama, and he invited her to a screening at his home, where he asked for a massage. At a later meeting she had expected to be at a group dinner, but when she arrived it was just her and the producer. Shortly after arriving, he allegedly pressured her to go to his room for the sake of her career, citing other actresses who had done so. She refused, just as she later refused working with Weinstein again.
Katya Mtsitouridze
The list of women who say Weinstein cornered them at festivals includes Russian TV host Katya Mtsitouridze, who encountered him at the 2004 Venice Film Festival. She told The Hollywood Reporter that she had turned down invitations to meet Weinstein in his hotel room before. She agreed to a public meeting with him in Venice, but he moved it to his hotel room at the last moment, Mtsitouridze claims. When she arrived, he was wearing a bathrobe and said the masseuse was late, but that they could “have fun without her.” He added, “You will love it. I’m a guru in this matter. You never met a man like me.” Mtsitouridze froze. The table was set for two and when the waiter came into the room, she ran. When she saw Weinstein on a red carpet years later, she said he told her, “‘Don’t even think about saying anything. Forget all about it. Be a smart girl.’”
Sean Young
The Blade Runner star alleged that Weinstein exposed himself to her in the early 1990s when she was working on Love Crimes, a movie produced by his company, according to an interview she gave the Dudley and Bob with Matt Show. “I personally experienced him pulling his you-know-what out of his pants to shock me,” she said on the podcast. “My basic response was, ‘You know, Harvey, I really don’t think you should be pulling that thing out, it’s not very pretty. ‘“ Young made a point to not work with Weinstein again, she said.
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