Maureen Lipman: Celebrities are sending out mixed messages in #MeToo era by dressing like 'prostitutes'

The 72-year-old also defended The Pianist director Roman Polanski

Maureen Lipman has criticised female celebrities for dressing like “prostitutes” and “confusing” men in the #MeToo era.

While acknowledging the support and encouragement women have received when coming forward with their stories, the veteran British actor said there was a tendency to have a “kneejerk” reaction to allegations. She went on to criticise women for wearing “bondage clothing” and “dressing a bit like a prostitute would have dressed”.

Lipman told Radio Times: “Young female pop stars, for example, are saying: ‘It’s my body, and I’m empowered to show it to you.’ But then: ‘Don’t touch it, don’t come near it, don’t flirt with it.’

“And that is a bit of a shame because flirting is some of the best fun you’ve ever had in your life. We’re batting our eyelids and clenching our teeth at the same time. And that is very confusing.”

The 72-year-old warned that “we mustn’t wipe out men”, adding that, although women have been brutalised over the centuries, the message #MeToo is projecting is not right.

“It’s too all-inclusive, and it smacks to me of the reaction to Jimmy Savile: ‘We messed up big-time, now let’s get every light entertainer and unfashionable comedian or performer, let’s get ‘em for putting a hand on a knee 40 years ago.”

Lipman went on to defend Roman Polanski who she worked with on the movie The Pianist, calling the director’s decades-long exile from Hollywood “probably enough” punishment. Polanski was initially arrested and charged with raping 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977.

“We’ve got to stop judging everybody now on the mores of then,” she said, adding that in the Seventies “it was plausible for a young girl to be brought to Jack Nicholson’s house and left with Roman Polanski. It wasn’t an unusual thing.”

Lipman also defended Woody Allen, saying that only reason not to work with the controversial director would be because he does not make good films. “[But] who wouldn’t work with him if he’s going to redo Hannah and Her Sisters?”

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The actor, who has also been a widely outspoken critic of the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, recently joined the cast of Coronation Street. Although she appeared in the show once before, Lipman will be playing a new character named Evelyn Plummer.