You look like a fat pig, Weinstein told UK actress

HARVEY Weinstein flirted with British actress Hayley Atwell before telling her she ate too much and looked like a ‘fat pig’, it was reported last night.

But the 65-year-old producer was given a dressing down by actress Emma Thompson, who threatened to quit the film they were working on if he repeated his behaviour.

Oscar-winner Miss Thompson, 58, has emerged as one of the few film stars to have stood up to Weinstein, rushing to the defence of Miss Atwell, who was then working on one of her first acting roles.

The actresses were filming an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited in North Yorkshire in 2007 when Weinstein visited the set.

He was in negotiations to distribute the film in the US when he reportedly accosted Miss Atwell, then 24, during a break in filming.

A source told the New York Post that Weinstein ‘started flirting with the actress, who was clearly nervous, starring in one of her first major roles’.

Weinstein then joined the cast and crew for lunch, warning Miss Atwell to watch what she was eating as ‘you look like a fat pig on screen’, according to the US newspaper.

But when Miss Atwell – who has gone on to major Hollywood success in Captain America and subsequent Marvel Comics films – told Miss Thompson that Weinstein had ordered her to go on a diet, the Oscarwinning actress ‘flipped’, taking Weinstein aside. She ‘threatened to quit if he forced Miss Atwell or any other woman on set to go on a diet’.

The insider added: ‘Emma called Harvey out for being a misogynist and a bully, and really gave him a hard time.’

Weinstein then apparently backed down.

Miss Thompson admitted earlier this year that such an incident occurred earlier, but she did not identify those involved.

Condemning the mounting pressure on actresses to stay slim, she said she had told the producer: ‘If you speak to her about this again, on any level, I will leave this picture. You are never to do that.’