In an interview with Variety magazine, Ashley Judd opened up about sexual harassment she endured as a young actress by a high-profile studio executive while filming her 1997 thriller, "Kiss the Girls."
"It was so disgusting," Judd, 47, said about the experience, which involved an unidentified studio executive not connected to the film. The actress described the exec as "one of our industry's most famous, admired-slash-reviled bosses," according to Variety.
Judd mentioned that the incident took place not long after she completed a college course in gender studies, and in spite of being identified as a feminist at the time, she had no idea what had happened to her. "It took years before I could evaluate that incident and realise that there was something incredibly wrong and illegal about it," she said.
In the interview, Judd states that the individual called her to his hotel room on several occasions, pretending to talk about roles in his movies.
"It went on in these stages," she said. "He physically lured me by saying, 'Oh, help me pick out what I'm going to wear.'" Judd said the situated escalated when the man tried to get the actor to watch him take a shower, to which she replied, "When I win an Academy Award in one of your movies," according to The Huffington Post.
Judd said that she was never offered a movie by the studio executive and expressed her regret that she didn't press charges at the time. "That's what I should have done, because I'm smart," she said. The actress later learned that the same studio executive had said and done the same things to a number of women in the film industry.
Once she was able to gain a clear perspective on the incident, the actress confronted her offender years later at the premiere of her movie "Double Jeopardy."
"I was no longer that naïve ingénue who couldn't identify what was happening as it was happening," Judd said. "I was getting ready to nail him on it, and he said, 'I think I'll let you out of that deal we made.' He knew I would come into my power."
Judd added that the issue of sexual abuse isn't going to solve itself. "We're all part of the problem, but we're all part of the solution," she explained. "Healing comes in a lot of different ways. Some things require intensive, contained work. Some things could be resolved with a good run or punching bag or an interaction with the perpetrator, in which one is able to take one's power back."
In March, Judd announced that she would be pursuing legal action against Twitter trolls who threatened her with sexual violence after she tweeted that Arkansas was "playing dirty" during their game against Kentucky, as HNGN previously reported.
