Hollywood Predator The Monster Who Terrorised Tinselltown

Traumatised stars expose ‘dirty Harvey’

- Megan McChesney

It’s the ultimate cliché – a fledgling young movie star full of hopes and dreams of a glittering career in the spotlight. But first she has to get past the movie executive who is far more interested in what’s beneath her clothes ...

Yes, you hear about it. But few of us imagined that it was the reality for some of today’s biggest female stars, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie.

The gasps were almost deafening in Hollywood last week as famously hot-headed movie producer Harvey Weinstein – one of the most powerful men in the film industry – came crashing down from his pedestal after a string of women, including actress Ashley Judd, accused him of sexual harassment.

Kiss the Girls star Ashley bravely told how the producer asked her to his Beverly Hills hotel in 1997 for a breakfast meeting. Then 25, she expected to meet him at the hotel restaurant, but she was instead ushered to his room, where he offered to give her a massage and asked her if she wanted to watch him take a shower.

“I said no a lot of ways, a lot of times,” revealed the actress, 49, last week. Feeling “panicky” and “trapped”, she eventually escaped his clutches by joking that the only way she would let Weinstein touch her was if she first won an Oscar in one of his films.

What allegedly happened to Ashley may turn out to be the tip of a very large iceberg when it came to Weinstein’s behaviour towards women – which British A-lister Emma Thompson has since described as “predatory”.