Veteran actor Susan Sarandon recently joined Mira Sorvino and Geena Davis at a panel at 90s Con. On Sunday, the Oscar-winning actors spoke about Hollywood and its treatment of women. Actor Mira Sorvino, who was one of the first women to openly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment in 2017, said that her career suffered a major setback after she rejected Weinstein’s advances. Sorvino said that her career took off after she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1996 for the film Mighty Aphrodite but she soon stopped getting work from big studios.
Sorvino said, “For a time, I had a lot of wonderful offers and then, my career was stifled by Harvey Weinstein. So, I stopped doing major studio movies after 1998. I stopped being a viable movie actress.” She said that afterwards, she worked on indie films and television shows. Sorvino had worked with Weinstein on films like Blue in the Face (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), and Mimic (1997).
On February 23, 2023, Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison on charges of rape and third-degree sexual misconduct. Before 2017, Weinstein was a celebrated film producer. His company Miramax made several Oscar-winning films.
Following Sorvino’s comments, actor Susan Sarandon said that the film industry has not done enough even after Harvey Weinstein’s arrest following the #MeToo movement, which outed many rich and powerful people for sexual misconduct.
The 77-year-old actor argued that people who aided Harvey Weinstein should be held accountable and said, “I don’t think we’ve done the cleanup afterwards that we should be doing. I don’t think people talk enough about the people who facilitated the Harvey Weinsteins of the world who are still functioning, who are equally responsible. They knew why they were sending people to a hotel, who didn’t pay attention when someone complained.”
This is not the first time Sarandon has spoken about how Hollywood rewards complicity, which in turn allows abusers to escape accountability.
In 2016, during a Q & A session after the screening of her documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr in UK, Sarandon said, “It’s certainly not a requirement to be smart in my business. Mediocrity is rewarded time and time again. A lot of the time you’re hired because you don’t ask questions.”
She added, “I think that we can’t condemn someone or we slut-shame somebody for embracing their seductiveness. But, at the same time, you want to have enough power and economic stability to able to say no, to not be in a Harvey Weinstein situation where your work is held hostage and you’re forced to do things you don’t want to do.”
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