A-lister Jennifer: I was forced to take part in nude movie casting line-up
JENNIFER Lawrence has become the latest actress to expose Hollywood’s sleazy side, telling how she was forced to participate in a nude line-up.
The Hunger Games actress, 27, said that after the ‘degrading and humiliating’ experience she was told to lose weight to get the part.
When she complained, a male producer told her she was ‘ perfectly f***able’ as she was.
Speaking at the same event, Reese Witherspoon revealed that a director sexually assaulted her when she was 16. The Legally Blonde star, 41, said it was the first of many such incidents during her career.
The stars spoke out following dozens of allegations against shamed movie mogul Harvey Weinstein involving sexual harassment, assault or rape. The scandal has seen thousands of women highlight the scale of the issue by sharing their experiences of sexual abuse on social media, using the hashtag #MeToo.
Miss Witherspoon said it had forced her to confront her own experiences and ‘the guilt for not speaking up earlier or taking action’.
She told the Women in Hollywood awards of her ‘ true disgust’ at the attack she suffered as a teenager and her fury that agents and producers made her feel she had to keep quiet if she wanted to keep working.
Miss Lawrence who won a best actress Oscar for her role in Silver Linings Playbook, recounted how a female producer had forced her to take part in the nude line-up with ‘ much, much thinner’ actresses to shame her into losing weight.
She said she was told she needed to lose 15lb in two weeks and the woman ‘told me i should use the naked photos of myself as inspiration for my diet’.
She asked to speak to a male producer about the ‘unrealistic diet regime’. She said: ‘He responded by telling me he didn’t know why everyone thought i was so
‘Degrading and humiliating’
fat, he thought i was perfectly “f***able”.’
Miss Lawrence, who began acting in 2006 and is now one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses, said the episode happened early in her career and that she had felt ‘trapped’ but that her role in The Hunger Games gave her ‘the power to say no’. She supported calls for a com- mission to enforce a ‘zero tolerance’ policy against sexual harassment and ‘predators’ in the industry.
Miss Witherspoon said she had endured ‘multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault’ during her career. The Weinstein scandal had made her relive her ‘true disgust at the director who assaulted me when i was 16 years old and anger that i felt at the agents and the producers who made me feel that silence was a condition of my employment’.
She told the audience, which included her 18-yearold daughter, Ava: ‘i wish i could tell you that that was an isolated incident in my career, but sadly, it wasn’t.’
Miss Witherspoon did not name her abuser but said she hoped her revelation and those of other stars would lead to changes in Hollywood.
Twilight star Kristen Stewart told how she had stopped executives targeting women on set. She warned: ‘it just keeps going every single day.’
Dumb And Dumber actress Lauren Holly and Game Of Thrones star Lena Headey have become the latest to accuse Weinstein. Miss Headey, 44, said he was ‘furi- ous’ after she rejected his advances, saying: ‘Don’t tell anyone about this, not your manager, not your agent.’
Years later he invited her to his hotel room. When she told him that ‘nothing is going to happen’, he grabbed her by the arm and marched her from the hotel, she said.
Miss Holly, 53, said Weinstein approached her naked during a ‘business meeting’ and got angry when she refused to massage him.
‘He told me that i would make a bad decision if i got out of there... i pushed him and ran,’ she said.
Catherine Zeta- Jones said the scandal should signal the end of ‘dinosaur’ men who believed they could get away with sexual harassment.
Weinstein is under investigation by police in new York and London over allegations of rape and sexual assault.
He has apologised for some aspects of his behaviour but denies any suggestion that he forced women into nonconsensual sex, or threatened their careers if they did not comply.