Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Live
PENELOPE REMEMBERS WEINSTEIN AS ‘COMPLICATED’
A year since the #MeToo movement started, the Spanish actor says there is a long struggle ahead
In 2009, actor Penelope Cruz won an Oscar for her role in a film produced by Harvey Weinstein and directed by Woody Allen, both now in the crosshairs of the #MeToo movement against sexual abuse.
“Thank you, Harvey Weinstein,” the Spanish actor said that night as she accepted her golden best supporting actor statuette for Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Since then, Weinstein has gone from Hollywood mogul to international pariah. He is the subject of sexual harassment and assault accusations from scores of women and is facing sex crimes charges in New York. He flatly denies all of it.
Cruz says she was never personally harassed by the producer and was unaware of his behaviour, which became public in October 2017, sending his career into free fall and bankrupting his company.
“Harvey was a complicated person, everyone knew that,” Cruz said on a trip to Los Angeles earlier this month. “We had discussions on a work level but never in other situations, never.”
The list of stars levelling abuse accusations against Weinstein is long: Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rose McGowan, Lea Seydoux, Rosanna Arquette, Cara Delevingne and Salma Hayek, one of Cruz’s close friends, to name a few. Hayek accused the magnate of threatening to “break my kneecaps” after she spurned his advances on the set of her film Frida. Her searing column, published in December 2017 in The New York Times, floored the 44year-old Cruz. “You can never blame a friend for not telling you in the moment,” Cruz said by telephone.
When the first accusations came out against Weinstein a year ago, Cruz said at the time that she was “shocked and profoundly sad”. Weinstein had always been “respectful” to her, she said in an Instagram post, adding she never “witnessed such behavior” as many women had described.
Cruz, who catapulted to fame as a protege of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, has shown solidarity with victims of harassment, a phenomenon she says goes far beyond the world of Hollywood. “I feel we must also speak on behalf of women who do not have a job in the public eye,” she said. “Housekeepers, teachers, doctors, lawyers -women no one gives a microphone to.”
“We can’t say everything is resolved,” she said, but “everything that has come to light is so important.” But she predicted “a long struggle” ahead. “It’s not a conflict of women against men -- men and women need to fight together to reach equality,” emphasized Cruz.