Secrets & Lies

In the wake of the film industry’s deluge of sexual assault revelations, Trista D. Mitchell exposes the dangerous underbelly of the Hollywood studio system that has exploited women for decades.

COCO’S ‘big break’ audition is in the talent scout’s flat. Through the grainy blue sepia of the camera lens, the girl’s face changes from eagerness to incredulity after the man insists she prove she’s a serious artist by removing her blouse. Silently crying in humiliation when she realises the con, she complies as the pseudo-pornographer coos her on.

Irene Cara’s performance as Coco Hernandez in the 1980 film Fame was seared into the psyche of every Hollywood hopeful, but few women survive showbiz without their own ‘Coco experience’. Mine came courtesy of the middle-aged man who’d just shown me around the Disney lot where he was producing a wholesome family comedy. We had met in provincial Washington State during his brief location shoot there, which I covered for my school newspaper. When I travelled to Los Angeles for college auditions — I wanted to continue my classical-theatre studies — my mother was relieved I’d have a local contact. Now he was grabbing me, forcing his tongue into my mouth. I was 15.

Fortunately I had two advantages on my side: he wasn’t big enough to overpower me, and, more importantly, I harboured no fantasies of Hollywood stardom, so my repulsion was unequivocal.