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In October 2017, reports in The New York Times and The New York Reporter exposed Harvey Weinstein as a serial rapist and abuser of women in Hollywood. Over the following months, more than 80 women came forward to accuse the film producer of inappropriate conduct of varying degrees, eventually leading to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.
Now, Lena Headey, who is currently best known for her role as Cersei in Game of Thrones, has come forward to say that she, too, was pursued by Weinstein - only she managed to get away. As a result, she found her acting career stifled after opportunities from Weinstein's studio, Miramax, dried up.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Headey revealed she only realised her career may have been sabotaged after the Weinstein scandal broke in 2017.
"After he was discovered to be a slimeball, on a grander scale than me just knowing it, I did start thinking, ‘F**k, maybe because I didn’t shag him, that’s impacted a decade of my working life’, because I did two jobs for Miramax before those incidents, and after that there was nothing," she said.
The actress has actually spoken out about her experiences with Weinstein before, back when he was first exposed. Back then, however, she had not comprehended what her interactions with him had spelled out for her over the following years.
Headey says that the first time she met the disgraced producer was at the Venice Film Festival in 2005. During their meeting, he invited her to take a walk, at which time he "made some suggestive comment and gesture" that made the actress very uncomfortable.
On another occasion, several years later, Headey says that Weinstein ran into her in LA, and invited her to his hotel room to "look at a script". Once there, however, he began making advances towards her. Again, she felt uneasy, and made it clear that she did not want anything of a sexual nature from Weinstein.
"I'm not interested in anything other than work, please don't think I got in [the lift] with you for any other reason," Headey recalls saying.
She later posted on Twitter about the interaction, saying that Weinstein was "furious" that she had rejected him, and had implicitly threatened her by saying that she was not to tell anyone "not your manager, not your agent" about how he had behaved.
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Now, of course, the tables have turned. Headey is set to appear in the upcoming final season of Game of Thrones, and also has a leading role in the new film, Fighting With My Family. Meanwhile, Weinstein is currently facing five criminal charges in New York pertaining to two women he assaulted.
A number of other women are still accusing Weinstein of various crimes from assault to rape, but the producer has not been indicted on any other charges as of yet.
He is currently out on bail after paying a $1 million bond, and has been forced to wear a monitoring bracelet until his trial. He maintains his innocence.
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Ever since the allegations leveled against Harvey Weinstein came to light last year, the news hasn't stopped coming with regards to sexual misconduct in the film industry. We have seen a range of famous actors be accused of multiple counts of assault and harassment, and victims finding the courage to speak up and bring the truth to light.
There was the #MeToo hashtag that allowed women across the world to share their stories and support each other, while the widely-publicised #TimesUp campaign sought to create real change with regards to how victims of sexual misconduct are treated.
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Jennifer Lawrence has often been asked about the movement and the situations women may find themselves in when trying to make it in Hollywood. This is partly because she's one of the most famous actresses in the world, but also because she was the victim of the 2014 photo leaks, in which nearly 500 private photos of celebrities (mostly women) were stolen from the cloud and posted online.
Lawrence recently opened up to Oprah Winfrey about having her sensitive photos leaked. "I have such a fear with my phone and my computer and electronics,” she revealed in the interview. "It's taking somebody's intellectual property but also my body. It was violating on a sexual level."
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Now, the conversation has returned for a variety of reasons. For one, Lawrence's latest film Red Sparrow deals directly with issues of gender inequality. In the movie, she lays a Russian ballerina-turned-spy who is forced to use her body as a weapon, seducing and manipulating a CIA agent for her bosses.
On top of this, there was a recent debate over a publicity photo in which Lawrence was seen wearing a Versace dress in the freezing cold, while her male co-stars wore winter clothing. The actress later weighed in to clear things up, saying that it was her choice and she found the backlash "offensive".
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This likely sparked the discussion point returning in a recent interview with CNN, in which she was asked about the mistreatment of women in Hollywood. Lawrence explained:
"When I hear the harrowing stories of Harvey Weinstein's victims, I don't feel right putting myself in that exact category. I was certainly mistreated. I was definitely treated in a way that now we would call abusive.
“I had to deal with being young and I had to put up with executives or higher-ups putting their hands on my legs and not feeling like I could say, ‘Please don’t do that’".
She then went on to point out that we need to change how we talk about victims of abusive behavior such as this, and believe the women who have the courage to come forward:
“97 per cent of sexual abuse allegations are true – there’s the three per cent that isn’t. I feel, over the past, we’ve focused on the three per cent and it’s been so easy to say, ‘Oh, she’s lying.’
"If we create a community where survivors can come forward and talk, then there’s going to be change and there’s going to be no way of going backwards.”
Speaking on a more personal level with regards to the 2014 hacks, Lawrence recently opened up about how the nude photos being posted online affected her relationships.
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