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Now, Salma Hayek accuses Harvey Weinstein of 'abuse', 'forced nudity' and threat to 'kill' her

WION Web Team
Delhi, IndiaUpdated: Dec 14, 2017, 02:09 AM IST
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File photo of Salma Hayek. Photograph:(Twitter)

Salma Hayek is the latest to join the list of Hollywood celebrities accusing movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. 

The A-lister wrote in a column for a leading New York daily claiming she said no to a list of unwanted advances from the producer when they worked together on the 2002 film "Frida" -- biopic on the life of Mexican painter of the same name. 

She wrote: "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."

She also wrote of the producer threatening to kill her following one of her refusals and being verbally abused on the set. 

In the column, the Academy-Award nominated actress starts with sharing her excitement on being signed by Weintein for Frida which then turned into a nightmare when his untoward advances began. She writes about her efforts to get herself and the film out of his company. 

She wrote: "I had to resort to using lawyers, not by pursuing a sexual harassment case, but by claiming 'bad faith,' as I had worked so hard on a movie that he was not intending to make or sell back to me."

Weinstein gave her a list of "impossible tasks with a tight deadline" in order to "clear himself legally". Once filming began, the sexual harassment stopped but he "became harder to deal with" as his demands outgrew himself. "He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman and he demanded full-frontal nudity", she wrote. 

Hayek recounts giving in to his request but struggled to film the scene. 

She wote, "My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry. It was not because I would be naked with another woman. It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein... I had to take a tranquilizer, which eventually stopped the crying but made the vomiting worse."

In the bare-it-all article, she even questions how she got saved from any further physical assault and wonders if her friendship with Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney had "saved (her) from being raped."

Hayek also feels she took a very long time to open up about her ordeal. She wrote, "I hid from the responsibility to speak out with the excuse that enough people were already involved in shining a light on my monster. In reality, I was trying to save myself the challenge of explaining several things to my loved ones."