Salma Hayek thinks Harvey Weinstein only responded to her sexual harassment claims because women of colour are "the easiest to get discredited".

Salma Hayek

Salma Hayek

The 51-year-old actress came forward last year as one of over 50 women to place misconduct allegations against the disgraced producer, and her claims were met with a denial from Weinstein himself.

Despite the large number of women who spoke out, Weinstein only made specific statements about Salma and Lupita N'yongo - who claimed she was harassed by the star in 2011 - and Salma has now claimed his move was a direct attack against women of colour.

She said: "He only responded to two women. Two women of colour. It was a strategy by the lawyers, because we are the easiest to get discredited. This is a story, it's not my idea, somebody actually wrote an article about it. It is a well known fact that if you are a woman of colour, people believe in you less, and believe what you say less."

The 'Frida' actress believes that Weinstein, 66, went to the "weakest links" in the list of women who had accused him, in the hopes of being able to "discredit" every woman who had come forward.

She continued: "So he went back attacking the two women of colour, in the hopes of discrediting ... if he could discredit us - which would be easier for the audience, the readers, to not believe us - he could then maybe discredit the rest. So he went to the weakest link."

Salma also claimed that if there hadn't been as many allegations made against Weinstein, people would have accepted his denial of her accusations.

Speaking to Variety magazine at the Women In Motion panel at Cannes Film Festival, she said: "The good is that there's so many. Because if there hadn't been so many, probably people would have thought that we made that up."

Last year, Salma accused Weinstein of having repeatedly asked her to perform tasks including take a shower with him, give him a massage, and letting him perform oral sex on her.

The 'From Dusk Til Dawn' actress claimed she turned down his requests, and alleged the producer even threatened to kill her.

Weinstein's lawyers immediately denied the claims, in a statement which read: "All of the sexual allegations as portrayed by Salma are not accurate and others who witnessed the events have a different account of what transpired."

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