UK actress Sophie Dix left depressed, quit acting after Harvey Weinstein encounter

  • 13/10/2017

A British screenwriter alleges Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her 26 years ago - an experience so traumatising that she was left depressed and immediately stopped pursuing film roles.

Movie mogul Weinstein has been sacked by the board of his hugely successful Weinstein Company, and is now the subject of a police investigation in the wake of a bombshell New York Times report that exposed an allegedly extensive history of sexual harassment.

Sophie Dix alleges the embattled film executive asked her to join him in his London hotel room to watch clips from The Hour of the Pig, a film she was starring in alongside Colin Firth, in 1990.

In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, Dix said she went "trustingly and naively" - but soon realised she'd made "a terrible mistake".

"I got to the hotel room, I remember talk of a massage and I thought that was pretty gross. I think he showed me his big back and I found that pretty horrid," she said.

"Then before I knew it, he started trying to pull my clothes off and pin me down and I just kept saying, 'No, no, no'. But he was really forceful.

"I remember him pulling at my trousers and stuff and looming over me."

Dix said she managed to escape him and bolted to the bathroom, where she stayed for a while trying to work out what to do.

"After a while I remember opening the door and seeing him just there facing the door, masturbating, so I quickly closed the door again and locked it," she said.

"Then when I heard room service come to the door, I just ran."

Dix, who has acted in British soap operas since the meeting but no further films, says the incident was "the single most damaging thing that's happened in my life".

She said she was left bed-ridden for six months after the incident - and was further traumatised when, on Christmas Day 1990, he called her to ask whether there was anything he could do for her.

She felt the conversation was actually him telling her to "stop talking" about the incident to others.

Dix had been vocal about the incident to her co-stars, friends and family - but people within the film industry didn't really want to know about it, she said.

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