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Thandie Newton 'groped by co-star' and warned against speaking out over sexual abuse

The actress is warning of widespread sexual abuse in 'every single industry'

Saturday 30 July 2016 19:40 BST

(Jon Kopaloff)

Actress Thandie Newton has claimed she was once groped by a co-star as she warned of a “widespread problem” of sexual abuse in “every single industry”.

The British star said the incident involving a fellow actor - who she did not name - happened after the birth of her first child and when she was married.

She also told how a producer explained she was going to be topless in a scene because it would get “ratings”, and that a publicist warned her against speaking out about sexual abuse.

Her comments came after Newton, 43, revealed that a director filmed up her skirt during an audition in her early career and later showed the footage to his friends.

She told the Press Association: “I've literally been in situations where a co-actor has groped me and tried to engage me and I'm like, 'What the hell, I've got a kid. I've got one kid and a husband - what are you doing?'.

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

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1/12The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Anne Hathaway

The 32-year-old actress said she has already experiences job rejections because of her age. “Now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part? I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are,” she told Glamour.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Helen Mirren

On news that Maggie Gyllenhaal had been turned down for being ‘too old’, aged 37, to play a 55-year-old man’s partner: “It’s f***ing outrageous. It’s ridiculous. Honestly, it’s so annoying. And ’twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It’s so annoying.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Gyllenhaal revealed she was told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old, aged 37, to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. “It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh,” she said at the time.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep has helped fund an all-female screenwriters group called The Writer’s Lab to encourage more women to pen Hollywood scripts. She previously told Vogue in 2011: “Once women pass childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Emma Thompson

The actress said she thought Hollywood is “still completely s***” when it comes to treating women equally to men. ““When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world. And when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women, and I find that very disturbing and sad.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Elizabeth Banks

Banks said she was driven from acting to directing due to the lack of roles for older women in Hollywood. “"[Industry sexism] drove me to direct for sure. I definitely was feeling that I was unfulfilled and a little bit bored by the things that were coming across my desk. I mean look at Gwyneth Paltrow who has her Oscar [for Shakespeare in Love] and played fifth banana to Iron Man,” she told Deadline.

PA

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Viola Davis

“I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualised role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualised woman. I was the prototype of the ‘mommified’ role,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Liv Tyler

The Lord of the Rings actress said she only get cast in roles where she is treated as a “second class citizen” at the age of 38. “When you’re in your teens or twenties, there is an abundance of ingenue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], you’re usually the wife or the girlfriend - a sort of second-class citizen. There are more interesting roles for women when they get a bit older,” she told More magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Cate Blanchett

The actress famously called out sexism on the red carpet at the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Awards. When a camera operator scanned her up and down, she said: “Do you do this to the guys?” In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine, she reminded the film industry that movies with leading women can still be successful. “And thank you to... those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the centre, are niche experiences. They are not -- audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Ellen Page

Asked if she had ever encountered sexism in Hollywood, Page told The Guardian: ‘Oh my God, yeah! It's constant! It's how you're treated, it's how you're looked at, how you're expected to look in a photoshoot, it's how you're expected to shut up and not have an opinion, it's how you... If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Zoe Saldana

The actress says she refuses roles where she has to play the generic girlfriend, wife or sexy bombshell. "It's very hard being a woman in a man's world, and I recognised it was a man's world even when I was a kid. It's an inequality and injustice that drove me crazy, and which I always spoke out against — and I've always been outspoken,” she told Manhattan magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Charlize Theron

The actress spoke to ELLE about negotiating equal pay for the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel: "This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn't mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you're doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way."

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

“If I'd been an 18-year-old-girl, desperate, I'm not sure. And attracted to him, let's say. That could have turned into a situation.”

She added: “It's a widespread problem in every single industry, in every single place.”

In one incident, Newton said she questioned a producer about why she was topless in a scene and he replied: “Thandie. Kid. Think about it - Thandie Newton, top off, ratings.”

The actress, who starred in Mission: Impossible II and the Oscar-winning film Crash, said she started talking about sexual abuse years ago in the hope of protecting young people.

She added: “I had a publicist who said, 'It's really not good for you to be associated with this kind of conversation because it's kind of a bum out. People associate you with a bum out'.

“Being associated with a bum out, that's a sacrifice I'm making because yeah you're right, people want to open a magazine so they can be titillated.

“I don't want to do that because I'm interested in the one person who reads that and will protect themselves better and be more aware.”

Newton, who is starring in the upcoming sci-fi thriller Westworld, which airs on Sky Atlantic in October, said she used her acting career to fund her work as a human rights activist.

She revealed she is backing a campaign to end tipping because the practice was “creating so much abuse”.

“It's either you've got to be nice to the customer because they're going to give you your wages because you've got zero dollar minimum wage,” she said.

“Or you've got to be nice to the manager who gropes you in the back or rapes you in the back - and it's not just women but it is mainly women - because you're relying on the employment to get the tips.”

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