Actress Salma Hayek has written a harrowing op-ed describing her alleged encounters with disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein while making the film Frida in 2002.
In the New York Times exclusive, Hayek alleges that “for years, he was my monster” but that she had “brainwashed” herself “into thinking that it was over”.
The actress writes that she was forced to deny the advances of Weinstein on multiple occasions.
“I was so excited to work with him and that company. In my naïveté, I thought my dream had come true. He had validated the last 14 years of my life. He had taken a chance on me — a nobody. He had said yes,” she recounts.
“Little did I know it would become my turn to say no.”
The 51-year-old alleges Weinstein would harass her, request she take a shower with him and ask for oral sex.
“No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn’t even involved with,” she writes.
“No to me taking a shower with him. No to letting him watch me take a shower. No to letting him give me a massage. No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage. No to letting him give me oral sex. No to my getting naked with another woman.”
Hayek also accuses Weinstein of dragging her out of the opening gala of the Venice Film Festival to “hang out at his private party with him and some women I thought were models but I was told later were high-priced prostitutes”.
She adds: “The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”
The actress alleges that she only agreed to film an additional sex scene in Frida because of his demands.
“He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman. And he demanded full-frontal nudity. He had been constantly asking for more skin, for more sex,” she writes.
Arriving on set was traumatic.
“And for the first and last time in my career, I had a nervous breakdown: My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry, unable to stop, as if I were throwing up tears,” she recounts.
As the Guardian repots, six women have filed a class-action lawsuit against Weinstein. Dozens of others have accused the producer of sexual harassment, assault and rape.
You can read Hayek’s powerful op-ed in full here.
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