November 11, 2018

Mira Sorvino Speaks Out on Her #MeToo Experience: ‘It’s Been a Really Hard Year’

Speaking about her #MeToo experience in a Los Angeles Times profile, Mira Sorvino admits that “it’s been a hard year, not going to lie.” The Oscar-winning actress, one of many women to accuse Harvey Weinstein of both sexually harassing her and intentionally derailing her career, says that “the idea that there was this malevolent hand that actually had changed the course of my professional life was devastating to me.”

“I was like, that’s why I’ve had a bad downturn in my career. Why I couldn’t be in any studio movies for a decade and a half. I won an Oscar. My work hasn’t changed. My performances are still comparable to my old performances. Just the access was denied,” Sorvino said.

In a New Yorker report published last October, Sorvino accused Weinstein of massaging her shoulders and attempting to get physical in a Toronto hotel room in 1995. Following that report, Peter Jackson and Terry Zwigoff came forward to say that Weinstein had blacklisted the actress from auditioning for “The Lord of the Rings” and “Bad Santa,” respectively.

“I just felt iced out, but I didn’t know that it went anywhere beyond just [Weinstein’s] particular films. So to feel like it was this broad-reaching thing that affected my entire career was really, really hard to handle,” Sorvino said. “Because that’s when I had the biggest potential to solidify my career as a leading lady, and to make the kind of economic strides that would have secured my family forever. And we’ve had some lean years over the last ten years. I have four kids. And to not always be able to provide for them in the way that we would like to is really awful.”

The alleged incident with Weinstein was not Sorvino’s only experience with sexual harassment or assault; she has also accused an unnamed casting director of gagging her with a condom when she was just 16 years old.

“All of those traumas resurfaced once I came out about Harvey,” she said. “They were like festering but covered wounds. I think that a lot of people in this #MeToo generation will tell you it is re-traumatizing to speak out. Because you start examining it again, and reliving it, and history starts repeating itself in your mind. I find myself much more angry about it, because in the past I tried to make it no big deal to myself. And now I look back at the teenage self, and I’m like, that is so terrible that that happened to you, and you have a right to be angry at your attacker.”

Source: IndieWire film