Thandie Newton was sexually abused by director
Los Angeles, July 2 (IANS) British actress Thandie Newton has opened up about being sexually abused as a teen early on in her acting career.
Newton, who has acted in films like “The Pursuit of Happyness”, “Mission: Impossible II” and “Crash”, revisited the traumatic experience, which occurred during a callback audition with an unnamed male director, reports variety.com.
“A director, on a callback, had a camera shooting up my skirt and asked me to touch my tits and think about the guy making love to me in the scene,” Newton told W magazine.
“I thought, ‘Ok, this is a little weird,’ but there was a female casting director in the room and I had done weird stuff before so I did it,” she added.
She then realised years later, after being approached by a drunk producer at the Cannes Film Festival, that the director had been sharing the video with his friends.
“‘Oh, Thandie, I’ve seen you recently!’ And he lurched away looking really shocked that he’d said that,” she recalled the producer saying.
“It turns out that the director was showing that audition tape to his friends after poker games at his house. And they would all get off on it,” she said.
Newton first revealed the incident in an interview in 2013 in which she discussed being “objectified to an extreme” and “exploited” thorough the roles she was asked to take and what she was expected to do in auditions.
The 43-year-old said she is speaking out again now to prevent others, including her two daughters, from experiencing similar trauma.