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Salma Hayek has said disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein turned the making of her 2002 passion project, the Frida Kahlo biopic Frida, into a nightmare after the actress refused the mogul's relentless advances, adding that he threatened to kill her.
Key points:
- Hayek says refusals of massages, showers and sex enraged Weinstein
- Hayek regularly starred in films released by Weinstein in the 1990s
- She says he insisted on adding an explicit sex scene to her film Frida
"For years, he was my monster," Hayek wrote in an op-ed published yesterday by The New York Times, in one of the most vivid accounts yet of Weinstein's alleged abuse and harassment.
Her refusals of massages, showers and sex enraged him, she wrote, adding: "I don't think he hated anything more than the word 'no'."
Hayek, who regularly starred in films released by Weinstein's Miramax in the 1990s, credited him with helping her start her career.
But she said he would turn up at her door "at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location".
When Hayek brought Frida, which she was producing, to Miramax to distribute, Weinstein made outrageous demands as payback.
Hayek said he insisted on rewrites, more financing and, most heinously to her, a sex scene with full-frontal nudity.
He even threatened to kill her, she said.
In order to finish what was a labour of love for Hayek, she agreed to the nude scene.
But she said she had a nervous breakdown while shooting it.
"My body wouldn't stop crying and convulsing," wrote Hayek.
"It was not because I would be naked with another woman.
"It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein."
Weinstein initially refused to give the movie a theatrical release, but eventually relented after pressure from director Julie Taymor and Hayek.
It went on to gross $US56.3 million ($73.7 million) worldwide and land six Oscar nominations, winning two.
Dozens of women have accused Weinstein of sexual harassment, and numerous women have said he raped them.
Weinstein, who is currently under investigation for sexual assault in four cities, has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
"Why do so many of us, as female artists, have to go to war to tell our stories when we have so much to offer?" Hayak wrote.
"Why do we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity?
"I think it is because we, as women, have been devalued artistically to an indecent state, to the point where the film industry stopped making an effort to find out what female audiences wanted to see and what stories we wanted to tell."
AP
Topics: film-movies, assault, sexual-offences, united-states