Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman earlier revealed that she too has 100 stories of sexual misconduct in Hollywood and has experienced the same misconduct in the movie industry many times.
In a recent interview with the Mirror, Portman recalled one terrifying encounter that she faced during her initial years of acting.
Portman revealed that she was lured on to a private jet alone with a Hollywood producer and “just one bed”.
She said, “I was like, yeah, why wouldn’t I accept a flight on a private plane with a big group of people? And I showed up and it was just the two of us and then one bed was made on the plane.”
Thankfully, the producer took ‘No’ for an answer, and this story did not end up like countless others that have recently come to light in Hollywood and elsewhere.
“Nothing happened,” she says. “I was not assaulted. I said, ‘This doesn’t make me feel comfortable’ and that was respected.”
The Black Swan star said she had “normalised” the behaviour and spoken out after the Harvey Weinstein allegations made her realise it was “super not ok”.
She added, “That was really unacceptable and manipulative. I was scared.”
The actress, who began acting her acting career aged just 13 in 1994 film ‘Leon: The Professional’, said people would comment on her body even as a child and admitted that she normalised harassment and discrimination to the extent she did not even realise it was happening.
“I think my first reaction when I heard everybody coming out was, ‘Wow, I’m so lucky that I haven’t had this,’“ noted Portman.
Adding, “And then, on reflection, I was like, ‘OK, I definitely have never been assaulted. But I’ve had discrimination or harassment on almost everything I’ve ever worked on in some way.”
The Thor star also shared that the Weinstein scandal will change Hollywood for good.
She said, “There are so many things that we took for granted as part of our world. A lot of things that we just kind of put up with for reasons of maybe just being numb to it. But if you spent all your time reporting what was going on, that’s all you would do as it’s so pervasive. And yeah, it gets so built into the power struggles in every industry.”
More than 50 women have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse. Claims of harassment have also been made against actor Kevin Spacey, who apologised over one incident and is allegedly seeking therapy.
Sylvester Stallone and Ed Westwick have both vehemently denied claims made against them and Dustin Hoffman said of an allegation of harassment, “It is not reflective of who I am.”
