Actress Salma Hayek Comes Forward – Describes Harrowing Sexual Experiences With Weinstein

Actress Salma Hayek Comes Forward – Describes Harrowing Sexual Experiences With Weinstein

Selma Hayek has released a written, first-person account of her interactions with Harvey Weinstein and it’s not good.

Writing in the first person in the New York Times, the actress Hayek, a 51 year-old mother born in Mexico who moved to Hollywood in 1991 after earning a reputation for herself in the Mexican film and television industry, is now opening up about her experiences with the disgraced producer. She started with a short apology, explaining that she had been approached by friends and reporters to open up about an “episode in [her] life” involving Weinstein.

Salma Hayek, center, with her husband François-Henri Pinault, left and Harvey Weinstein, right.

Raised Catholic, she said that she had “hid from the responsibility to speak out” by telling herself that enough people had already spoken out against the man, but that she was shielding herself from the shame of having to explain that she had been bullied and hurt.

“When so many women came forward to describe what Harvey had done to them, I had to confront my cowardice and humbly accept that my story, as important as it was to me, was nothing but a drop in an ocean of sorrow and confusion.”

So, she begins her story to help the “millions of girls like me” who have been exposed to a “vice that has been socially accepted.”

When she was working to produce a film about her the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, she worked with Harvey on a deal to make the film, but in order to turn her dream into a reality, Harvey demanded that she sign a deal to do more films with his company, Miramax. She said that, looking back, it was her friendship in Hollywood with Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney that “saved [her] from being raped” during her working relationship with Harvey.

So, besides signing on to work with him as an actress, she listed all the other times she told him no. She said that he would show up on location for movies he wasn’t even involved in, demanding to be let into her hotel room.

Allegedly, Harvey had asked her to shower with him, to watch him shower, to allow massages, to get naked with other women and to perform sexual favors.

And whenever she turned him down, he would get angry, at one point threatening to kill her. She said that he would go from sweet-talking her, to becoming full of rage when she turned him down. At one point, she had to involve lawyers. Instead of arguing sexual harassment, she argued “bad faith” in order to get out from under his influence and Miramax. She was given a startling list of demands, but thanked her friends Edward Norton (who rewrote the script for the Frida movie with no credit), as well as Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd and Geoffrey Rush along with two women, Margaret Perenchio and Julie Taymor, who both contributed funds and directed the film.

When the production began to film, she reports that the harassment stopped, but “the rage escalated.” She resorted to using tranquilizers to calm herself due to his demands, including giving in to his demand for a nude scene.

And it took home six Academy Awards.

“I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and why so many of us have waited so long. Men sexually harassed because they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally can.”

Recently, the long-time connections between Harvey and the Clintons were exposed. It had been public knowledge that Harvey had been hosting Democrats for Hollywood fundraisers at his home. But, Lena Dunham, perhaps the most pro-Hillary celebrity during the last campaign, revealed to the New York Times that she had warned Hillary about associating herself with Harvey. Dunham, of all people, is responsible for the current reports that Hillary and Bill knew full well that Harvey’s wandering hands were an “open secret” in Hollywood, but chose to ignore the claims.

Margaret M.

Internet Specialist at Warfare Media.

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