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Ashley Judd

Judd: I was sexually harassed in Hollywood

Andrea Mandell
USA TODAY
Ashley Judd attends the 2015 Social Good Summit  at 92Y on September 27.

Ashley Judd is speaking out being sexually harassed by a major Hollywood mogul 20 years ago.

In a new interview with Variety, Judd details her experience but doesn't name names, referring to her perpetrator as only "one of our industry's most famous, admired/rivaled bosses."

"I was making Kiss the Girls at the time, and here I was, a declared feminist," says Judd. "I had completed a minor in what was then called women's studies, which we now call gender studies. And yet I did not recognize at the time what was happening to me."

The studio chief would repeatedly draw her to his hotel, she says, by asking her to meet him for something to eat.

"Fine, I show up. Oh, he's actually in his room," Judd recalls. "I'm like, Are you kidding me? I just worked all night. I'm just going to order cereal. It went on in these stages. It was so disgusting. He physically lured me by saying, "Oh, help me pick out what I'm going to wear."

Judd says several other actors she's spoken to had "the exact same thing had happened to them by the exact same mogul".

The worst came when the head honcho asked Judd to watch him shower.

"The ultimate thing when I was weaseling out of everything else was, "Will you watch me take a shower?" And all the other women, sitting around this table with me, said, "Oh my god—that's what he said to me too." In that moment, I told him something like, "When I win an Academy Award in one of your movies." He said, "No, when you get nominated." I said, "No, no, when I win an Academy Award."

That was a small moment of power when I was able to contradict him and hold to my reality. And then I got out of there. And by the way, I've never been offered a movie by that studio. Ever."


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