Rose McGowan is latest actress to say Weinstein raped her
Weinstein faces new charges from actress Rose McGowan; NYPD, Scotland Yard contacts other accusers The Svengali who demanded a high price for Oscar glory
New York: The case against Harvey Weinstein took on an international dimension on Thursday, with police in New York and Britain launching investigations — while a fourth woman accused the movie mogul of rape.
An avalanche of claims of sexual harassment, assault and rape by the hugely influential Hollywood producer have surfaced since the publication last week of an explosive New York Times report alleging a history of abusive behaviour dating back decades.
On Thursday, American actress Rose McGowan became the fourth woman to accuse Weinstein of raping her. A spokesman for the New York Police Department meanwhile confirmed that it was investigating a 2004 case, but provided no details.
The New York Daily News reported that the case involved aspiring actress Lucia Evans, who earlier told the New Yorker magazine that Weinstein had forced her to perform oral sex on him.
And a statement from Scotland Yard said the Metropolitan Police were investigating “an allegation of sexual assault by Merseyside Police.” It did not elaborate.
The Daily Telegraph said the case involved an actress now understood to be living in the Liverpool area. McGowan berated Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a blistering series of tweets on Thursday, claiming she told Amazon Studios chief Roy Price that Weinstein had raped her but was ignored.
“Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof,” she wrote. Paris: Small European films like Shakespeare in Love, Amelie and Cinema Paradiso might never have become huge worldwide hits without Harvey Weinstein, the powerful Hollywood producer now at the centre of an escalating scandal over his alleged sexual assaults on a string of actresses. But almost always there was a price to pay, industry insiders said.
With his brother Bob, Weinstein turned their Miramax and later.
The Weinstein Company studios into Oscar- winning machines, accumulating more than 80 Academy awards since the The Crying Game and My Left Foot in the early 1990s. For a long time Weinstein’s door was the only one to knock on for British and European film- makers wanting to crack the US market.
“He was the best at marketing” films for American audiences said the French producer Vincent Maraval, who worked with Weinstein on several films including the The Artist, which won five Oscars in 2012. “He gave foreign cinema a chance. He was tough, rough, had a very big ego, and would never take no for an answer, but Miramax would not be the same without him.”