Reese at 16 told to cover up sexual assault by director
ACTRESS Reese Witherspoon has alleged she was sexually assaulted by a director when she was 16, but told to remain silent by agents and producers.
As Hollywood reels from the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Witherspoon opened up about her career in a powerful speech reflecting on the problems faced by women in the film industry.
“This has been a really hard week for women in Hollywood, for women all over the world, and a lot of situations and a lot of industries are forced to remember and relive a lot of ugly truths,” she said at an Elle Women in Hollywood event on Monday.
“I have my own experiences that have come back to me very vividly and I find it really hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to communicate a lot of the feelings that I’ve been having about anxiety, honest, the guilt for not speaking up earlier.
“(I feel) true disgust at the director who assaulted me when I was 16 years old and anger at the agents and the producers who made me feel that silence was a condition of my employment. And I wish that I could tell you that was an isolated incident in my career, but sadly it wasn’t.
“I’ve had multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault and I don’t speak about them very often, but after hearing all the stories these past few days and hearing these brave women speak up tonight about things that we’re kind of told to sweep under the rug and not to talk about, it’s made me want to speak up and speak up loudly because I actually felt less alone this week than I have ever felt in my entire career.”
She added: “I feel really, really encouraged that there will be a new normal. For the young women in this room, life is going to be different because we’re with you, we have your back and it makes me feel better. It makes me so sad to talk about these issues, but I would be remiss not to.”
The Big Little Lies producer’s comments came after dozens of women accused disgraced movie titan Weinstein of sexual misconduct, including Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, Asia Argento, Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow.