Mira Sorvino was gagged in an audition at 16
Actor Mira Sorvino, who has accused disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexually harassing her in the 1990s, has now opened up about an incident involving a casting director. Sorvino claims he gagged her with a condom during an audition when she was 16.
“In looking back over at my career, I realised [in] that one of my very first auditions when I was 16, I was completely treated inappropriately by the casting director,” the 50-year-old said, in an interview with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s HFPA in Conversation podcast.
“In order to scare me for this horror movie scene, he tied me to a chair, bruised my arm, and I was 16 years old, and then he gagged me and I was all game because I’m trying to be scared for the scene,” recalled Sorvino, and added, “And at the end he takes the gag out of my mouth and said, ‘Sorry for the prophylactic’.” Sorvino did not name the casting director or the concerned movie. Sorvino, too young to even know what a condom tasted like, adds that “it was so inappropriate”, and questions “what the heck was a casting director doing with a condom in his pocket in an audition?”
Sorvino added that the audition was one of her first “introductions to how the acting system works”, adding that she didn’t object initially.”
“When you’re young, you’re like, ‘Oh okay, I’ve got to be tough, I’ve got to be down to really perform, and if that means they need me to go this extra mile’ — and you see we have awards given to people for giving particularly raw performances in very brutal, sexual scenes or things like that,” said the Mighty Aphrodite (1995) star.
“There’s that aesthetic of letting go of the self and trying to submit yourself for the art. People take advantage of that. People have always taken advantage of that,” added Sorvino.