Kate Beckinsale has joined several of Hollywood's leading female stars in alleging an inappropriate encounter with Harvey Weinstein from years past.
Ever since the New York Times published an exposé on the Hollywood producer's alleged sexual misconduct last week, stars including Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Cara Delevingne, Ashley Judd and Lea Seydoux have accused Weinstein of impropriety.
The latest to come forward is Underworld star Kate Beckinsale, who accused Weinstein of wearing a bathrobe for a meeting and trying to ply her with alcohol when she was just a teenager.
"I was called to meet Harvey Weinstein at the Savoy Hotel when I was 17," she wrote on Instagram. "I assumed it would be in a conference room which was very common. When I arrived, reception told me to go to his room. He opened the door in his bathrobe.
"I was incredibly naive and young and it did not cross my mind that this older, unattractive man would expect me to have any sexual interest in him. After declining alcohol and announcing that I had school in the morning I left, uneasy but unscathed.
"A few years later he asked me if he had tried anything with me in that first meeting. I realised he couldn't remember if he had assaulted me or not. I had what I thought were boundaries."
At that point, Kate says she made a conscious decision never to work with Weinstein — a choice that she believes hindered her prospects in Hollywood over the years.
"I said no to him professionally many times over the years - some of which ended up with him screaming at me, calling me a c**t and making threats, some of which made him laughingly tell people, oh 'Kate lives to say no to me'," she claimed.
"It speaks to the status quo in this business that I was aware that standing up for myself and saying no to things, while it did allow me to feel uncompromised in myself, undoubtedly harmed my career and was never something I felt supported by anyone, other than my family."
Kate concluded her open later with a call for women in all walks of life to speak out if they've experienced similar misconduct, while also challenging anyone who would enable such behaviour.
She wrote: "I would like to applaud the women who have come forward, and to pledge that we can from this create a new paradigm where producers, managers, executives and assistants and everyone who has in the past shrugged and said 'well, that's just Harvey /Mr X/insert name here' will realise that we in numbers can affect real change.
"For every moment like this, there have been thousands where a vulnerable person has confided outrageous unprofessional behaviour and found they have no recourse, due to an atmosphere of fear that it seems almost everyone has been living in.
"I had a male friend who, based on my experience, warned a young actress who said she was going to dinner with Harvey to be careful. He received a phone call the next day saying he would never work in another Miramax film - the girl was already sleeping with Harvey and had told him that my friend had warned her off.
"Let's stop allowing our young women to be sexual cannon fodder, and let's remember that Harvey is an emblem of a system that is sick, and that we have work to do."
Her moving statement comes amid police both in the US and the UK confirming simultaneous investigations into historic allegations made against Weinstein.
Harvey Weinstein's spokesperson has not directly responded to these police investigations or Beckinsale's accusations, but made a blanket denial of "any allegations of non-consensual sex" earlier in the week.
