Samantha Morton has claimed Harvey Weinstein tried to destroy her career.
Samantha Morton shunned a Harvey Weinstein film
The 46-year-old actress accused the disgraced producer – who is currently in jail after being found guilty of sex crimes – of threatening to make sure she would “not work again” after she turned down an approach to be in his 2000 romantic comedy ‘About Adam’, which starred Kate Hudson, Stuart Townsend and Frances O’Connor.
She recalled on ‘The Louis Theroux Podcast’: "I said, 'I don't like it. I think the film is really misogynistic and I don't want to be part of it.'"
The ‘Minority Report’ actress said the casting director then told her: "You don’t say no to Harvey."
But Samantha stressed she wasn’t rejecting the producer, just the film – and was issued with a chilling warning when she refused to change her stance.
She said: "I had just worked with Stuart Townsend on Under the Skin. It was just not interesting to me. I was uber-polite.
"I [then] had a phone call saying, 'You can't say no.' The 'no' wasn’t being listened to. So they kept coming back with this role and I was told unequivocally, 'You’re not going to work again unless you do this role. I’m going to make your life hell. You will not work again.'"
The ‘Whale’ actress refused to give in and admitted she felt her decision cost her roles on some of Weinstein’s later films, including being passed in favour of Lena Headey for a role in 2005’s ‘The Brothers Grimm’ opposite Matt Damon and Heath Ledger after the producer deemed her “unf*******”.
Samantha said: "It made me question why he was anti-me?”
She then remembered the ‘About Adam’ warning.
She added: "I forgot about it because it was years earlier. And then all these years later, I realised that [when] I get an offer, get a letter from a director, if Miramax or then the Weinstein Company had anything to do with it, it was just awful for me.
"He had a reason, a deep-seated reason, to just try and destroy my career… He categorically couldn't, because I kept working, doing independent cinema all over the world."
Tagged in Heath Ledger Kate Hudson Samantha Morton