‘This is why Uma Thurman is angry’

Actress Uma Thurman has detailed long hinted-at allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein.

In a New York Times article, she says Weinstein pushed her down and “tried to expose himself” at the producer’s hotel room in London during the 1990s, before she managed to “wriggle away”.

The 47-year-old star also said she was forced into sex as a teenager by an unnamed actor 20 years older than her.

Thurman had expressed anger at Weinstein last November, saying: “I’m glad it’s going slowly – you don’t deserve a bullet.”

She did not make specific allegations against Weinstein at the time. But she details her claims in a 3,000-word feature published in the New York Times on Saturday, entitled: “This is why Uma Thurman is angry”.

Among the revelations in the article are that Thurman was sexually assaulted at age 16, at the beginning of her career.

She met an actor – who is not named – at a Manhattan nightclub, and was “coerced” when she returned to his home for a late-night drink.

“I was ultimately compliant,” she told the newspaper. “I tried to say no, I cried, I did everything I could do. He told me the door was locked but I never ran over and tried the knob.”

“When I got home, I remember I stood in front of the mirror and I looked at my hands and I was so mad at them for not being bloody or bruised.”

Her allegations regarding Weinstein took place in the time period after the success of the 1994 Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction, which was produced by Weinstein. The alleged incident took place at his suite in London’s Savoy Hotel.

“He pushed me down. He tried to shove himself on me… He did all kinds of unpleasant things,” Thurman told the Times.

“But he didn’t actually put his back into it and force me. You’re like an animal wriggling away, like a lizard.”

She said a bunch of flowers arrived the next day with a note reading: “You have great instincts.” And that in the aftermath, Weinstein’s assistants kept calling about new film projects. -BBC