Trimming a hedge got me cuffed by police
BOND actress Naomie Harris has revealed she was groped by “a huge star” when she was in her mid-20s.
Naomie, 43, who has played Eve Moneypenny alongside Daniel Craig in Skyfall and Spectre, said her previous claim that she had not been sexually harassed in the movie industry was not true.
She said: “I was in an audition and he put his hand up my skirt.
Shocking
“What was so shocking about it was the casting director was there and the director, and of course no one said anything at all because he was – he is – such a huge star.”
While the actress did not name the actor, she is one of many to make such claims following the #MeToo movement in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal.
Naomi’s mother Lisselle raised her on her own in a council flat in Finsbury Park, north London. Naomie went on to study at Cambridge before embarking on an acting career.
She is soon to star in her first leading role as a tough cop in the action thriller Black And Blue.
Talking about the role, she said: “I get consumed by the characters that I play and acting is quite a stressful, adrenaline-inducing thing.
“So I didn’t really know how well I would cope with being a lead. It was partly a confidence issue, as well.
“I just thought I’d be biting off more than I could chew.” And she said that acting in a violent thriller is nothing like her own nature.
“I’m very, very sensitive. But I’ve done enough kind of self-development work to realise that actually anger is a really important emotion that needs expression,” she said.
●●Black And Blue will be released on October 25. A MAN carrying old garden shears was handcuffed and threatened with a Taser.
Jonathan Dalton had been cutting hedges and was walking home when police told him to drop his “weapon”.
He said: “They pointed the Taser at me and put me in handcuffs. I was quite shaken up and frightened.”
But they stood down when the 63-year-old explained he had been cutting a hedge in the picturesque Essex village of Abberton before starting to walk to his home on Mersea Island, about two miles away.
Mr Dalton said the incident on October 2 was “an assault on society’s freedoms”.
Essex Police said they had been told by a member of the public that they had seen a man carrying a “small sword”. Soon after a second said the man had a “knife”. But once officers saw he had shears they took Mr Dalton home.