Kate Beckinsale has detailed instances where she was assaulted on set during her career as a film actor.
The star, known for her roles in the Underworld films and Pearl Harbour, said she was sharing her experiences in light of Blake Lively’s lawsuit against her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni.
In the almost 5-minute-long video posted to Instagram, Beckinsale spoke of a “machine” in the industry that will “absolutely destroy” women who complain about “legitimately offensive, upsetting, harmful, whatever, in this industry”.
Beckinsale said she had “47 million stories” like this.
“I was actually, at the age of 18, felt up by somebody that I really trusted on a crew,” she said.
“[I] went to the lead actress, who is known for being a supporter of women, and said, ‘This has happened’, and was told, ‘No it didn’t’.
“I went to another actress, and said, crying, ‘I’ve just been assaulted by this man’, again, ‘No you haven’t been’.”
The 51-year-old said she has twice been put in “a very unsafe situation” while filming fight sequences for separate films.
“There’s a certain kind of actor who gets a kind of a thrill out of sort of being able to legally harm a woman during a fight sequence,” she said.
“I was harmed to the point where there were MRIs proving it.
“I was gaslit and made to feel like I was the problem, blamed and ostracised, left out of cast dinners, not spoken to, as soon as I mentioned that there was a problem.”
Beckinsale said she has never met either Lively or Baldoni but the matter has highlighted an industry-wide issue that has been “going on forever”.
“What’s really depressing is I see a lot of men going around saying, ‘Oh, it was very different a while ago, you know, the climate is do different and it’s so much better’,” Beckinsale said. “It f***ing isn’t.
“If you’re a woman and you have a legitimate complaint, not, ‘I don’t have enough baby llamas in my trailer and I’d like more of a lion’, but ‘Somebody’s touching my boobs’, or ‘Calling me a c***’, or ‘Calling me a bitch’, or whatever, you’re f***ed. On the whole, you’re f***ed. If you mention it, you’re f***ed.
“It’s supposed to be that you absorb it and somehow then, you’re somehow the homie.
“That has to stop, that has to stop. I’m grateful to Blake Lively for highlighting the fact that this is not an archaic problem that no one’s facing – this is continuing.”
Beckinsale also recalled facing criticism over her appearance, including having “groups of people stand in front of me, going, ‘What the f*** are we going to do? How do we make her attractive?’”
“I was put on such a strict diet and exercise program for a movie that I lost my period altogether – that’s happened twice.”
On another occasion, Beckinsale said a publicist she was employing forced her to do a photo shoot the day after having a miscarriage.
“I said, ‘I can’t, I’m bleeding. I don’t want to go and change my clothes in front of people I don’t know’. And she was like, ‘You have to or you’ll be sued’.”
In her post’s caption, Beckinsale added: “I don’t want our younger generation of actresses to be facing all the same things as we all do and did, but they have it even worse because of social media and how that can be weaponised to a literally nuclear level, designed to eviscerate”.
“Complaining about abuse should not beget more abuse, particularly at work where there should be inviolable safeguarding in place.
“It should not be expected of women who have been harmed, insulted, hurt, shamed or in any other way abused (mostly with at least 100 witnesses ) to have to be ‘one of the boys’ and take it on the chin or face retribution for having been abused in the first place.”
