Actress Connie Nielsen has alleged she once had to force Harvey Weinstein to remove his hand from her thigh while they were at a group dinner with her then-boyfriend.
The Wonder Woman star has recalled her experience of sexual misconduct in a new guest column for Variety.com, in which she admits she had forgotten all about the reported encounter until Weinstein was accused of being a serial sexual predator in exposes in The New York Times and a subsequent The New Yorker article earlier this month (Oct17).
In her Variety piece, Nielsen begins by noting how she is adding her name to the “rapidly expanding list of women whom Harvey Weinstein has harassed,” referring to the likes of Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cara Delevingne, Kate Beckinsale, and Asia Argento, who have all made allegations of bad behavior against the disgraced producer in recent weeks.
The Danish actress claims she was well-aware of rumors about Weinstein’s reported acts of sexual harassment before she signed up to work on 2005 drama The Great Raid, which he executive produced through his former firm Miramax, and even “warned a young co-star not to take Harvey up on his invitations to drinks unless the whole group was there”.
However, Nielsen, who dated Metallica rocker Lars Ulrich from 2004 to 2012, had not experienced any personal “issues” with Weinstein himself, until he allegedly groped her leg at a release party.
“It was therefore a real shock when Harvey proceeded to put his hand on my thigh at dinner during the opening night of (The) Great Raid, at which both my boyfriend and my brother were present,” she explains. “I grabbed his hand and squeezed it violently to hurt him and proceeded to hold it in place on his own thigh.
“I steered clear of him as soon as I could for the rest of the evening but soon forgot about it, until the New York Times and New Yorker pieces set off a landslide.”
Nielsen goes on to claim few actresses, if any, actually set out in Hollywood with a view to exchanging sexual favors for jobs, and she takes issue with those who have insisted they were never “that girl”, the kind of female stereotype who would willingly perform sex acts to further their careers.
“No one knows how they would act were they equipped with different childhoods, traumas and levels of resilience,” she writes. “As long as we suspect female actors of being somehow complicit in their own victimization, as willing participants in their own humiliation, we shame the victim and enable the culture of silence that allows predators to act with impunity.”
Nielsen concludes her column by suggesting there should be a separate “overseeing body in our industry where one can lodge a complaint” about harassment or abuse, so victims will feel more comfortable reporting inappropriate behavior in such a male-dominated world and help to put a stop to such acts.
Wrapping up her piece, she remarks, “Perhaps now people in the position to create change will be willing to recognize that progressive company policies not only create sturdier results but safeguard the dignity of all our colleagues.”
