Rose McGowan hit headlines back in 1998 when she wore what remains one of the most revealing outfits ever to the VMAs - and in red carpet history.
However, while it might have shocked people at the time, in a new interview with Yahoo Entertainment, McGowan has explained that she never wore the dress to be provocative. Instead, she said that she's always hated the red carpet experience.
"You have these big men, a hundred of them yelling at the top of their voice trying to get you to look at them, but your body doesn't understand why it's being screamed at and aggressed on. … I'm like, 'I feel like I'm being shot with guns right now,'" she said.
She decided that she was going to use her red carpet appearance with her then-boyfriend Marilyn Manson as an opportunity to make a statement, but what no one knew at the time was that it came shortly after her alleged sexual assault at the hands of Harvey Weinstein.
"It was my first big public appearance after being sexually assaulted," McGowan, who has alleged that she was raped by Harvey Weinstein in 1997, said.
"I just felt like, 'Oh Hollywood, would you want a body just that you can use and throw away? Then I've got one for you!' It was like at the end of Gladiator when he comes out and he's like, 'Are you not entertained?' And if you look at me, I did it with power. I didn't do it with my hand on my hip to be sexy…
"Most of the women that are dressed like that on the red carpet, it's a calculated, sexy move to turn people on. Mine was like, 'I'm gonna f*** with your brain. I'm going to blow your brain up.' And nobody had done it."
In the video below, McGowan speaks out about the Harvey Weinstein scandal:McGowan said that Manson was one of the many people who didn't understand why she had chosen to wear something so revealing.
"[The Weinstein assault] happened before I went out with him. …I didn't tell him because what happened,'" she recalls.
"I did tell him later - well, he found out because he would ask my friend, 'What's wrong with this girl? She wakes up screaming at night and soaking wet in the bed and the sheets are wet. She does it every night, like two or three times a night.' I would have terrible nightmares, PTSD stuff. So, we had to talk about it then."
McGowan and Manson were a couple for three years and they spent two of them engaged, however, they had a messy split, but have since made amends.
Speaking of her time with the singer, McGowan said: "It very instrumental in healing for me at that point, because I wanted to be young and free, and I felt so old. I had just been like working, it felt like, for so long and I've done like five movies in a row, and then the bad thing happened.
"And after that, I just wanted to run away with the circus and just feel free and have fun. And also because people are like sending him death threats all the time and all that - it was more about me protecting him. I could focus on him, instead of dealing with my own stuff."
The actress said that she now has mixed feelings about her now-notorious VMA look, but said that she doesn't necessarily regret it.
"It was kind of hard. I hadn't really ever dealt with global media shaming. But it prepared me for later on it happening to me a whole bunch. It was also like, 'Sorry you're square and I'm not bummer,'" she chuckles.
"I'm like, 'Why did I do that?' I've had to look at that. You know, when you do stuff sometimes on instinct and in a mood, like when a mood overtakes you on, you analyze what it was that brought you to that mood or that choice. So, I've certainly had a lot of time to analyze and I'm looking at the timeline. But I completely understand why I did what I did."
