Dominic Lawson

Among the many actresses who have in recent days revealed their unwanted sexual mauling at the hands of the film producer Harvey Weinstein is the Casino Royale star, Eva green.

She revealed how ‘ shocked and disgusted’ she had been at the time.

In reporting this yesterday, Sky news showed stock footage of green posing at a film awards ceremony alongside... Roman Polanski.

I’m sure the broadcaster was not trying to make a point. But I will: how credible is Hollywood’s decision to strip Weinstein of his membership of the Academy of motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which awards the oscars), when it continues to treat the film director Polanski as a deity?

Unlike Weinstein, who has yet to be charged with a crime, let alone convicted, Polanski pleaded guilty to ‘unlawful sex’ in an American court in 1977 — a plea bargain after he had drugged, raped and sodomised 13-year-old Samantha galley, a would-be model. He then fled the country before sentence could be passed.

Ever since, as a fugitive from the Feds, he has not been able to work in the U.S.

Abuse

But the Academy awarded him an oscar in 2003 — and the first person captured by the cameras leaping to her feet to applaud was meryl Streep. The very woman who last week said the revelations of Weinstein’s decades-long abuse of her fellow actresses came as an appalling surprise — which makes Streep about the only person in the business who didn’t know about his predatory practices.

no, Weinstein got away with it, because Hollywood is and always has been a sinkhole of ruthless sexual exploitation of young — very young — actresses by the men of power there.

The only new element is that in recent years it has simultaneously sanctified itself by funding progressive causes. It was absolutely characteristic that Weinstein reacted to the claims about his abuse by saying that he would now be channelling his ‘ anger’ against the national Rifle Association.

Weinstein himself was a big donor to the Clintons, and also very friendly with President obama — he gave obama’s daughter, malia, an internship in his company. You can bet this is one young woman he didn’t grope.

In recent years, it would do an actor’s Hollywood career more harm if he came out as a Republican than would the sleaziest sexual behaviour.

The LA Times recently interviewed an actor it described as ‘a conservative but not a Trump supporter’ who said he didn’t want to be identified ‘for fear of professional repercussions’. He told the paper: ‘In 30 years of showbusiness, I’ve never seen it like this. If you are even lukewarm to Republicans, you are excommunicated from the church of tolerance.’

That tolerance extended to Weinstein’s casting couch practices. Indeed, they were reflected in his contract, which specified that if he were sued for sexual harassment, he would have to fund any resultant damages, and then also pay the company ‘$250,000 for the first such instance, $500,000 for the second such instance, $750,000 for the third such instance and $1,000,000 for each additional instance’.

In other words, the Weinstein Company had turned its co- founder’s sexual harassment into a profit centre.

He was indulged because he brought in the money — and with high-quality films, not trash. With such titles to his credit as Shakespeare In Love and The King’s Speech, Weinstein has been thanked by actors in oscar ceremonies more often than any other entity (including god).

And that’s the other Hollywood deal: the artist is above the law. Weinstein made this clear himself when, in 2009, he led the industry’s protests and petitions after Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police following a request by the U.S. Justice Department (still trying to get the director to do his time). The Independent newspaper published an article by Weinstein telling readers how ‘Roman Polanski is a man who cares deeply about his art and its place in the world’. And the rape and sodomising of a 13-year-old? Weinstein dismissed it as ‘a so-called crime’.

A host of directors and actors followed Weinstein, signing the petition for Polanski, including natalie Portman, Tilda Swinton and Emma Thompson.

Yes, Emma Thompson, who last week appeared on the BBC to add her voice to those denouncing Weinstein’s alleged sexual abuse. When newsnight’s Emily maitlis raised the Polanski petition with Thompson, she said she had signed ‘without really thinking about it . . . I had been absolutely bamboozled by my respect for his art’.

Grotesque

Thompson said that she had later asked for her name to be removed from the petition, after it had been pointed out to her by ‘young feminists at my son’s university’ that Polanski was ‘a rapist’.

That is not the Hollywood establishment’s view, however.

Whoopi goldberg — who is a member of the board of the Academy of motion Picture Arts which on Saturday stripped Weinstein of his membership — defended Polanski in 2009 with the grotesque argument that what he did ‘wasn’t rape-rape’.

You can be absolutely sure that if it were, say, a lorry driver or a plumber who had plied a 13-year-old girl with drugs to rape her, that Whoopi goldberg would not have brushed it aside with a supposedly humorous remark. nor, indeed, would anyone have been able to get an article published in a Left-of-centre British newspaper, dismissing such an incident as a ‘so-called crime’.

Bill Browder, whose book on his experiences fighting corruption in Putin’s Russia is now being made into a movie, recently told me: ‘Hollywood is a far worse place than moscow.’ When I asked how that could be, given that friends of his had been murdered by the regime, he replied: ‘There are some good guys in moscow. There are none in Hollywood.’