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Actress Thandie Newton, who revealed in 2013 that she was once sexually abused as a teen by a casting director, says she was excluded from Hollywood’s #TimesUp movement because of her industry status.
Newton told the The Daily Telegraph that she was kept out of the movement because she “wasn’t hot enough” and talked about how much that exclusion hurt her.
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“I wasn’t hot enough,” she said. “I wasn’t mainstream enough, and I wasn’t going to be at the Oscars this year, even though I am having a renaissance in my career.”
Newton, one of the stars of the hit series Westworld, has been open about the exploitative nature of Hollywood including sharing the story of her sexual abuse and the subsequent shaming she received as a result.
An ugly experience
“There was one horrific incident where I went back for a second audition,” she said in 2013. “The director asked me to sit with my legs apart; the camera was right positioned where it could see up my skirt.”
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The actress said that the unnamed director then told her to “put (her) leg over the arm of the chair”, and “think about the character I was supposed to be having the dialogue with and how it felt to be made love to by this person.”
She found out from a producer at the Cannes Film Festival three years later that the director had used the video to entertain friends at parties.
The British-born Newton, 45, has starred in major films such as Mission: Impossible, The Pursuit of Happyness, Crash, and Beloved and she is slated to appear in the upcoming Star Wars film Solo.
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She feels her exclusion sends the wrong message to young women coming into show business.
“I felt if there was one girl whose family was thinking about putting their child into show business, that would help them decide,” Newton said. “That was all I cared about.”