Thandie Newton has revealed that she was once sexually abused during an audition with a director early in her career.
The Mission Impossible, 43, star said the incident happened when she was 18 and “so naïve”.
"A director, on a callback, had a camera shooting up my skirt and asked me to touch my tits and think about the guy making love to me in the scene,” Newton told W Magazine.
"I thought, 'OK, this is a little weird', but there was a female casting director in the room and I'd done weird stuff before so I did it."
Thandie then told how years later she was approached by an inebriated film producer at Cannes Film Festival who exclaimed, "'Oh, Thandie, I've seen you recently!", before later confessing to the Crash star’s husband that the director in question had been screening her audition tape for his friends.
Newton hopes to help young actors by opening up about her negative experiences. "I was so so naive when I started out and I realise now that we have to prepare our kids,” she said.
“One person will read this and it will stop them getting sexually abused by a director. That's the person I'm interested in."