Helen Mirren breaks silence on Hollywood sexual harassment scandal
In an exclusive interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly, Helen Mirren has opened up for the first time about the sexual harassment scandal that’s rocked Hollywood in recent months.
“The shift has been coming, the volcano has been bubbling away there,” she said. “It was weird, all of them – not just [Harvey] Weinstein; Bill O’Reilly [Fox News host], Roger Ailes [Fox News Chairman]. Weird. Ew! Men are weird! Obviously it’s absolutely nothing to do with sex, it's more to do with power, and what is it in men that needs that?”
Mirren, 72, like hundreds of the entertainment world’s biggest stars, had previously worked on films distributed by Weinstein.
“The irony and the contradiction and the pain of the whole thing, if you like, the loss of Harvey, is that he did the kind of movies that an awful lot of filmmakers want to do, the independent films, the interesting films.
“The very first time I met and worked with Harvey was on The Cook The Thief His Wife And Her Lover, which he distributed in America. He’s very courageous and he took that little, low-budget, high-art movie and he made sure that it was seen in America.”
But despite admitting the disgraced producer was a “bully”, the screen legend had no idea of the evil lurking inside him.
“I knew that Harvey could be very, very aggressive, very bullying, very demeaning to people he worked with. And a lot of people in Hollywood can be like that, incidentally.”
Mirren’s husband, director Taylor Hackford, was just as shocked as his wife. “He was like me, I don't think he had any concept of that. He had a concept of the nature of people losing it and shouting at people and demeaning people in front of other people, that sort of thing.
“It's part and parcel of existence in Hollywood, really, and people know that and they toughen up and they deal with it and they get on with it… But yes a major shift has happened.”