Harvey Weinstein: The Many Women Who Accussed Weinstein of Sexual Misbehaviour

super saturday

Harvey Weinstein’s accusers include household names who were still looking to establish themselves when the alleged offences took place. Below are some of the allegations made public so far.

The Italian actor Asia Argento alleges that Weinstein raped her when she was 21. She told The New Yorker she had been invited to what she thought was a party in his Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc room near Cannes, but found herself alone with him. He changed into a bathrobe and asked her to give him a massage. She said she had reluctantly agreed, but that he pulled her skirt up and forcibly performed oral sex on her. She said she felt guilty about what she described a “horrible trauma” and for not fighting him off. She later went on to have consensual sexual relations with him, which she described to the magazine as one-sided and onanistic, because she believed he would ruin her career if she didn’t comply. “After the rape, he won,” she said.

Lucia Evans, then Stoller, was an aspiring actor when Weinstein approached her at the Cirpriani Upstairs club in New York in 2004, she told The New Yorker. He arranged a meeting at the Miramax office, where she found herself alone with him. “He forced me to perform oral sex on him,” she said. “He’s a big guy, he overpowered me.” She told the magazine she blamed herself for not fighting harder and that she was still haunted by it.

Gwyneth Paltrow was 22 and had been hired for the lead in the Jane Austen adaptation Emma. She told the New York Times she had been summoned to Weinstein’s hotel suite, where he suggested she give him a massage. She said she refused and felt petrified. She confided in her then boyfriend Brad Pitt, who confronted Weinstein. Soon after, the producer warned her not to tell anyone else. “I was expected to keep the secret,” she told the newspaper. “I thought he was going to fire me.”

During the release of Playing by Heart in the late 1990s, Angelina Jolie found herself in a hotel room with Weinstein, she told the NYT. He made unwanted advances which she rejected. “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.

Another anonymous actor claimed Weinstein had raped her. He changed into a bathrobe and “forced himself on me sexually”, the New Yorker reported. She felt “horror, disbelief and shame” and considered going to the police, but then thought about how much she could lose and decided “just to move forward”. She continued to have a professional relationship with him after the alleged rape.

Mira Sorvino, who starred in several of Weinstein’s films, found herself in his hotel room at the Toronto international film festival in 1995. “He started massaging my shoulders, which made me very uncomfortable, and then tried to get more physical, sort of chasing me around,” the Mighty Aphrodite star told The New Yorker. She said she had managed to leave.

Rosanna Arquette, who starred in Pulp Fiction, told The New Yorker she had been supposed to meet Weinstein for dinner at a Beverly Hills hotel to pick up a script, but on arrival was told to go to his suite. He answered the door wearing a white bathrobe and saying he needed a massage. She said he grabbed her hand and pulled it towards his penis which was “visible and erect … My heart was really racing. I was in a fight-or-flight mode”. She said she told him: “I will never do that”, and that he responded by telling hershe was making a huge mistake. She claims her career later suffered.

Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a Filipina-Italian model, was 22 when she was invited to Weinstein’s office in the Tribeca neighbourhood of New York. He lunged at her, groping her breasts and attempting to put a hand up her skirt while she protested. She went straight to the police. The New Yorker published an audio tape recorded when she was equipped with a NYPD wire tap. In the recording, Weinstein begs her to join him in his hotel room. She refuses and asks him why he had groped her breast the day before. “Oh, please, I’m sorry, just come on in. I’m used to that. Come on. Please,” he says. “You are used to that?” Gutierrez asks. “Yes,” Weinstein replies, later adding: “I won’t do it again”. He also says: “Don’t ruin your friendship with me for five minutes.”

Zoe Brock, a model and writer from New Zealand, then 23, accepted an invitation to Weinstein’s hotel suite at Cannes believing others would be present. When others left she found herself “alone in a remote hotel suite with Harvey fucking Weinstein,” she blogged. She alleges he took his clothes off and asked for a massage, forcing her to run to the bathroom to escape. “Harvey chased me, dick, balls and all, and banged on the door with his fists, pleading with me to come out”. She agreed to come out once he was fully dressed and then left.

Katherine Kendall, who appeared in the film Swingers, told the NYT she had been 23 when Weinstein invited her to a screening which turned out to be a solo trip with him to a cinema. Afterwards, he asked if they go to his apartment to pick something up, where he went to the bathroom, came back in a robe and asked her to massage him. She said he told her “everybody does it”, but she refused. He left the room and returned nude. “He literally chased me. He wouldn’t let me pass him to get to the door,” she told the paper. Then he implored her to at least show him her breasts, but she refused.

Tomi-Ann Roberts was a 20-year-old college junior working as a waitress when Weinstein set up an audition at his hotel. When she arrived, he was nude in the bath, she alleged in the NYT. He told her she would have a much better audition if she was comfortable “getting naked in front of him” as she might have to play a topless scene. She left, apologising, telling him she was too prudish to go along with it.

Ashley Judd, a US actor who has starred in a string of box-office hits, was 20 when Weinstein invited her to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what she thought was a breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or if she could watch him shower, she told the NYT. She said her thoughts were: “How do I get out of this room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein.”

Emma de Caunes, a French actor, met Weinstein at a Cannes party in 2010. She told The New Yorker he had invited her to a lunch meeting at the Ritz in Paris. In the hotel room he disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door open. “I was like, what the fuck, is he taking a shower?” she said. He came out naked with an erection and demanded she lie on the bed, she said. He told her that many other women had done so before her, but she left and slammed the door.

Romola Garai, a British actor who starred in Atonement and the BBC series The Hour, was 18 when Weinstein auditioned her wearing only a bathrobe at the Savoy hotel, leaving her feeling “violated”. She told the Guardian she “just tried to make out it was normal because as far as I was concerned it was a job interview. I knew something had happened to me that I didn’t like and that I felt belittled by it. But I didn’t feel like I had the right to complain”.

Dawn Dunning was 24, attending design school and waitressing in New York when she met Weinstein. The aspiring actor was invited to a meal with him at a Manhattan hotel, but on arrival was told to go to his suite because he was running late at a meeting. She told the NYT she found him alone in a bathrobe behind a coffee table covered in papers he said were contracts for his next three films. She alleged he told her she could only sign them on the condition she had three-way sex with him. She laughed and he grew angry, she said, telling her: “You’ll never make it in this business. This is how the business works”. She fled, left acting and became a costume designer.

The actor Rose McGowan reportedly reached a settlement with Weinstein following a hotel room encounter during the Sundance film festival. She had recently had a memorable role in the slasher movie Scream which came out in 1996.

Lauren Sivan , a former Fox News host, has alleged Weinstein trapped her in a closed restaurant and masturbated in front of her in 2007 after attempting to kiss her.

Liza Campbell, a writer and artist, told the Sunday Times Weinstein had summoned her to his hotel room in London before telling her to get in the bath with him, which she refused to do.

The French actor Léa Seydoux, who was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival for Blue Is the Warmest Colour, told the Guardian exclusively that Weinstein lunged at her and tried to kiss her on the lips in 2012 after a Paris fashion show they were both attending. “I had to defend myself. He’s big and fat, so I had to be forceful to resist him,” she said.

The British actor Cara Delevingne alleged she was sexually harassed by Weinstein early in her career, detailing how he encouraged her to kiss another woman in his hotel room. After she refused and tried to leave, Delevingne said: “He stood in front of [the door] and tried to kiss me on the lips. I stopped him and managed to get out of the room.”

Sophie Dix, an English actor who was on the brink of a career in the British film industry in the 1990s, told the Guardian her trajectory was “massively cut down” after an alleged attack by Harvey Weinstein in a London hotel. Dix, who was 22 at the time, described the alleged assault as “the single most damaging thing that’s happened in my life”.

British singer and model Myleene Klass, then 32, told the Sun newspaper that the Hollywood producer offered her a “sex contract” at a film festival lunch at Cannes in 2010 while working for CNN.

Weinstein’s spokeswoman has said in a statement: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr Weinstein. Mr Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.” Though he was unable to respond to anonymous allegations, of those made on the record “Mr Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual”, the statement added.

––Culled from THE GUARDIAN of London