Rule 5 Saturday - Lea Seydoux Knew

It's getting hard to keep excited about the Harvey Weinstein scandal, which seems to have confirmed and surpassed our worst fears about Hollywood. Question: Did he inspire the character and image of Jabba the Hutt? Anyway, Actress Lea Seydoux: ‘Everyone Knew What Harvey Was Up To’

French actress Lea Seydoux joins a growing list of women who say Harvey Weinstein tried to initiate an unwanted sexual encounter with her. Writing in the Guardian she says Weinstein demanded to meet her for drinks after a fashion show. She says he kept looking her over “as if I was a piece of meat.” She was invited up to his room and went. After a female assistant was dismissed, Weinstein literally pounced:

We were talking on the sofa when he suddenly jumped on me and tried to kiss me. I had to defend myself. He’s big and fat, so I had to be forceful to resist him. I left his room, thoroughly disgusted. I wasn’t afraid of him, though. Because I knew what kind of man he was all along.

That seems to be a general consensus, despite Meryl Streep and Hillary Clinton's somehow being unable to see. But would she have protested if he looked more like Brad Pitt?

Seydoux says she saw Weinstein making similar moves on a young actress at a subsequent event. “That’s the most disgusting thing,” she writes, “Everyone knew what Harvey was up to and no one did anything. It’s unbelievable that he’s been able to act like this for decades and still keep his career.”

She probably doesn't understand US politics either.

But Lea Seydoux suggests there are many more Weinsteins out there. Without naming names, she says she’s encountered similar behavior from several of her previous directors:

The first time a director made an inappropriate comment to me, I was in my mid-20s. He was a director I really liked and respected. We were alone and he said to me: “I wish I could have sex with you, I wish I could f**k you.”

Really? That long?  But he was just being honest!

He said it in a way that was half joking and half serious. I was very angry. I was trying to do my job and he made me very uncomfortable. He has slept with all of the actresses he filmed.

Good work if you can get it!

Another director I worked with would film very long sex scenes that lasted days. He kept watching us, replaying the scenes over and over again in a kind of stupor. It was very gross.
Yet another director tried to kiss me. Like Weinstein, I had to physically push him away, too.

She concludes her piece saying, “This industry is based on desirable actresses.” That’s certainly true. There’s a reason so many of the woman around Weinstein were world famous stars and it’s not solely because they could act. In fact, there’s a reason that the pipeline for Hollywood talent often comes from professional modeling agencies.

A very European girl, Lea has no particular problem with nudity in movies or advertising (NSFW links).

She first came to attention after she received her first César Award nomination for her performance in The Beautiful Person (2008) and won the Trophée Chopard, an award given to promising actors at the Cannes Film Festival.

Since then, she has appeared in major Hollywood films including Inglourious Basterds (2009), Robin Hood (2010), Midnight in Paris (2011) and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). In French cinema, she was nominated for the César Award for Most Promising Actress for a second time for her role in Belle Épine (2010) and was nominated for the César Award for Best Actress for her role as a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette in the film Farewell, My Queen (2012).

In 2013, Seydoux came to widespread attention when she was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as a lesbian art student in the critically acclaimed film Blue Is the Warmest Colour. That same year, she also received the Lumières Award for Best Actress for the film Grand Central and, in 2014, she was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award and starred in the films Beauty and the Beast, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Saint Laurent. She gained international attention for her appearance as Bond girl Madeleine Swann in Spectre (2015).

GOODSTUFF continues his absence. I'm starting to worry. Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho links with "Rule 5 Sunday: Pussycat No More" and "FMJRA 2.0: Casanova".