While discussing her long career in Hollywood and the #MeToo era, Anjelica Huston showed support for Woody Allen, Roman Polanski and Jeffrey Tambor, all men with sexual misconduct allegations brought against them.
Huston collaborated with Allen on two of his his films, “Crimes and Misdemeanors” in 1989 and “Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993. Dylan Farrow accused the director of molesting her in 1992, an incident which Allen has repeatedly denied and gave rise to the #MeToo movement. Huston said she would work with the director again in an interview with Vulture.
“In a second,” she said.
The actress was arrested in 1977 for cocaine possession at her then-boyfriend Jack Nicholson’s house after director Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl. Last year, Polanski was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science over the statutory rape charge. Huston also showed sympathy for the disgraced director.
Related
“It’s a story that could’ve happened ten years before in England or France or Italy or Spain or Portugal, and no one would’ve heard anything about it. And that’s how these guys enjoy their time. It was a whole playboy movement in France when I was a young girl, 15, 16 years old, doing my first collections. You would go to Régine or Castel in Paris, and the older guys would all hit on you. Any club you cared to mention in Europe. It was de rigueur for most of those guys like Roman who had grown up with the European sensibility,” she said. “My opinion is: He’s paid his price, and at the time that it happened, it was kind of unprecedented. This was not an unusual situation.”
During her time on the Amazon Prime series “Transparent,” Huston played the girlfriend of lead actor Jeffrey Tambor’s character. Tambor was fired from the show following sexual misconduct allegations in 2017, and his character will be killed-off in the upcoming final season. Huston spoke about her experience on set with Tambor, saying she’s met the two women who accused Tambor of sexual misconduct.
“At least insofar as I was concerned, nobody did or said anything inappropriate. I do think in this work we have to feel freedom. We have to feel as though we can say and do things that are not necessarily judged, particularly by the other people in the cast or crew,” she said.
After working in Hollywood for 50 years, Huston said she doesn’t think anything has changed in how men treat women in the industry. She said she’s been “objectified, misread or put down” by men on practically a daily basis.
“Frankly, I think there’s a whole element of guys who will get up to what they want to get up to,” she said. “And yet this whole thing continues to be whitewashed and whitewashed and whitewashed. On the other hand, there is a thing called a male imperative, and it is maybe stronger than any #MeToo movement, because it happens at birth. I have a great 3-year-old nephew who made his way over to my umbrella rack the other day and pulled an Irish walking stick out and said, ‘I am the leader of the universe.’ Girls don’t do that.”