Molly Ringwald: These Are My Harvey Weinsteins

Actress tells stories of disturbing sexual behavior she's encountered in 'New Yorker' column
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 17, 2017 7:18 PM CDT
Updated Oct 18, 2017 12:33 AM CDT
Molly Ringwald: These Are My Harvey Weinsteins
In an Aug. 19, 2015 file photo, actress and singer Molly Ringwald performs with her band at the Jazz Cafe in central London.   (Photo by Grant Pollard/Invision/AP, File)

Molly Ringwald had a negative interaction with Harvey Weinstein, but it was purely business-related. That doesn't mean she's escaped unscathed. In a New Yorker column, the actress says she's "had plenty of Harveys of my own over the years," including a 50-year-old crew member who pushed up against her with an erection when she was 13 and a married film director who put his tongue in her mouth, on set, when she was 14. "At a time when I was trying to figure out what it meant to become a sexually viable young woman, at every turn some older guy tried to help speed up the process."

It continued into adulthood: A director asked her to let the lead actor put a dog collar around her neck even though it wasn't in the script and made no sense in the story. The head of a major studio, after Ringwald's retreat from the spotlight, commented in a magazine article that he wouldn't know the 24-year-old "if she sat on my face." There are more stories, but she never discussed them publicly "because, as a woman, it has always felt like I may as well have been talking about the weather," she writes. "Stories like these have never been taken seriously. Women are shamed, told they are uptight, nasty, bitter, can’t take a joke, are too sensitive. And the men? Well, if they’re lucky, they might get elected President." Click for her full column. (More Molly Ringwald stories.)

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