Tag: Beckinsale

• Kate Beckinsale is sharing details about harrowing experiences she has had in Hollywood, including once being “forced” to do a photo shoot right after suffering a miscarriage
• Other examples include being called a “c—” and “bitch” on a movie set after inquiring about a fellow actor’s behavior and how it affected her and others’ personal time
• The actress is speaking out in the context of Blake Lively’s newly filed legal complaint against Justin Baldoni, alleging sexual harassment on the set of their movie It Ends with Us

Kate Beckinsale is speaking out about her own harrowing on-set experiences, in the wake of the sexual-harassment complaint that Blake Lively recently filed against Justin Baldoni.

The actress opened up in a candid video posted to her Instagram grid on Dec. 29, where she said that while she has never met It Ends with Us costars Lively and Baldoni, their situation has “highlighted … this machine that goes into effect when a woman complains about something legitimately offensive, upsetting, harmful, whatever, in this industry.”

One example, said Beckinsale, 51, is that she was once “forced by a publicist, that I was employing, to do a photo shoot the day after I’d had 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 do a photo shoot. I’m bleeding out a miscarriage,’ ” the Underworld actress said. “She was like, ‘You’ll have to, or you’ll be sued.’ “

Beckinsale also revealed that she was once on the set of a film “where I was referred to, by the end of it, both over the walkie-talkie and to my face to as ‘that c—,’ because I said, ‘I’m finding it very difficult — my costar is drunk every day and he’s obviously going through something and I have full sympathy for that, but I’m also waiting, as is the whole crew, six hours a day, for him to learn his lines. And it means I’m not getting to see my daughter in the evenings, ever, for the whole movie.’ ”

While she didn’t name the film project, she said that in response, the studio gave her a bike to ride around the lot while waiting, and that she was once called a “stupid bitch” during a take.

Of other experiences, Beckinsale said, “I was put on such a strict diet-and-exercise program on one movie that I lost my periods altogether — that’s happened twice.”

She also recalled being put in “unsafe fight situation on two different films with two different actors,” to the point where she had “MRIs proving” she was seriously hurt.

According to Beckinsale, she has been “gaslit and made to feel like I was a problem” and “blamed and ostracized” from cast gatherings, “as soon as I mentioned there was a problem,” including being blacklisted by Harvey Weinstein at one point. (Though she noted she was “one of the ones fortunate enough” to not be assaulted by him.)

The Pearl Harbor star also said she was “felt up by somebody I really trusted on a crew” when she was 18, and the “lead actress” and another actress on the movie both told her it didn’t happen.

Beckinsale went on to say she has “about 47 million stories similar to” the ones she shared and that while men often tell her things are different on set nowadays, “it f—ing isn’t.”

“I’m grateful to Blake Lively for highlighting that this is not an archaic problem that no one’s facing — this is continuing,” she said. “And then when it does happen, a machine goes into place to absolutely destroy you. And I’m sure that’s the case in other industries as well, and it’s just got to stop.”

Beckinsale, who has been open about health challenges in her past, presented her video alongside a lengthy caption that read in part, “Complaining about abuse should not beget more abuse, particularly at work where there should be inviolable safeguarding in place, and 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.”

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“I don’t want anybody, male or female who has a legitimate complaint to then have that weaponized against them in any industry, anywhere, and I mention this in association with Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni because our industry makes things more visible due to the press and the public getting deliberately involved and led towards an opinion they don’t realize is deliberate,” she added.

In a bombshell complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department on Dec. 20, lawyers for Lively claimed Baldoni, whose production company, Wayfarer Studios, developed It Ends with Us, sexually harassed the actress and then retaliated against her with a smear campaign after she spoke up.

The filing — a prerequisite before bringing a workplace harassment lawsuit in the state of California — sets the stage for what has the potential to be an ugly legal battle and shines a light on allegations of ongoing sexism in Hollywood years after the #MeToo movement.

“I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted,” Lively said in a statement to The New York Times.

Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman called the allegations “false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt” in a Dec. 21 statement.