On-screen toughie will ‘kill’ Weinstein
UNITED STATES: The Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein faces a legion of accusers, the contempt of his peers and possible criminal charges from prosecutors in Los Angeles who are reviewing two allegations against him.
He also faces the wrath of a man best known for playing a ruthless mobster in Goodfellas. Paul Sorvino, whose daughter Mira is among the large number of actresses who have accused Weinstein of sexual harassment, has warned the producer that ‘‘he better hope he goes to jail’’.
Sorvino, 78, whose daughter also accused Weinstein of seeking to derail her career when she denied his advances, offered a cheerful message of vigilantism. ‘‘He’s going to go to jail. Oh yeah. Good for him if he goes because if not he’s going to have to meet me. And I will kill the motherf***er.’’
Sorvino played the cold-blooded protection racket boss Paulie in the acclaimed gangster movie.
Mira Sorvino starred in several films produced by Weinstein, and won an Oscar for her part in the Woody Allen film Mighty Aphrodite. Alone with him in a hotel room during the Toronto Film Festival in 1995, he attempted to massage her shoulders, and then ‘‘tried to get more physical, sort of chasing me around’’, she told The New Yorker last year.
She said that she managed to fend him off, insisting that it was against her religion to date married men. Weeks later in New York, when Weinstein arrived outside her apartment after midnight, she told him her new boyfriend was on his way, she said.
Sorvino felt her treatment was mild, compared with some, but she was convinced that her response to his advances had damaged her career. Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, subsequently said he had been warned against casting Sorvino and another actress who had rebuffed Weinstein’s advances.
Jackson said he knew nothing of Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment of actresses when he was pitching plans for films based on the books of JRR Tolkien to Miramax, the studio the mogul led in the 1990s.
He was considering Sorvino and the actress Ashley Judd for roles. ‘‘I recall Miramax telling us they were a nightmare to work with and we should avoid them at all costs,’’ Jackson said. Sorvino responded on Twitter, saying: ‘‘There it is, confirmation that Harvey Weinstein derailed my career, something I suspected but was unsure. Thank you, Peter Jackson, for being honest. I’m just heartsick.’’
After learning that her father had threatened to kill Weinstein, Sorvino responded by reposting a link to her Oscars speech in which she declared that her father ‘‘taught me everything I know about acting’’. ‘‘My love for my father has only continued to grow since this moment,’’ she said.
‘‘He is the most loving father, the most brilliant actor, the most beautiful operatic tenor, the most talented visual artist, the wisest and most human advice giver.’’
Paul Sorvino said he had been ‘‘absolutely furious’’ when he learnt how his daughter had been treated. ‘‘My daughter’s a courageous and a wonderful human being and doesn’t deserve to have been treated that way by this pig. This pig is going to get his comeuppance. He’s going to go to jail and die in jail but if he doesn’t, Harvey come here, I have some news for you.’’
He added that he was not really contemplating murder, saying: ‘‘I won’t do anything terrible. I will just slap him around.’’ – The Times