Meryl Streep referred to him as God while accepting a Golden Globe. Quentin Tarantino compared their working relationship to a “22-year marriage”. He hosted a star-packed fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and hired Malia Obama as an intern. But Harvey Weinstein’s position as one of the most enduring members of Hollywood’s elite is in jeopardy after a blistering article in the New York Times accusing the movie producer of “decades of sexual harassment”.

Weinstein responded with an apologetic statement which, it later turned out, misquoted a lyric from Jay Z’s 4:44 song. “I’m not the man I thought I was and I better be that man for my children,” Weinstein said, wrongly ascribing the lyric to the rapper. “The same is true for me.”

Rumors of abrasive behavior have followed the 65-year-old throughout his career. But the New York Times article, which rested on testimonies from female assistants, ex-colleagues and high-profile actors who portrayed Weinstein as having used his power to coerce women into satisfying his sexual urges. It hinted at an even darker side to the man who many see as one of the modern fathers of the independent movie scene.

Despite Weinstein’s public display of contrition, acknowledging his behavior with colleagues had “caused a lot of pain”, his lawyers are pushing back forcefully against the claims and say they are preparing a lawsuit. One of his lawyers, Lisa Bloom, said the movie producer “denies many of the accusations as patently false”, while another, Charles Harder, declared the report “saturated with false and defamatory statements”.

While rumblings of the bombshell allegations emerged earlier this week, the accusations began back in 2015, when hearsay over Weinstein’s behavior crossed over into something more concrete. A 22-year-old model, Ambra Battilana, formally accused him of groping her in his office. The Manhattan district attorney decided not to pursue the case and Weinstein maintained his innocence.

But the episode hinted at a flip side to the glamorous image cultivated by a man known for championing independent film-makers, befriending starlets and helping them all to win a bounty of Oscars. Weinstein became one of the few producers to be deemed a star in his own right, booking talkshow spots and nabbing interviews with top publications. He wasn’t just interested in mere surface success, though, he wanted the substance to go with it and built a career on often fascinatingly audacious films that appealed to both audiences and critics.

In the late 1970s, he started Miramax, a distribution company with his brother, Bob Weinstein. The following decade saw the two bring films such as Errol Morris’s death-row documentary The Thin Blue Line to art-house cinemas and it was in 1989 that they finally broke out with Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, a film that turned the company into the most successful independent studio in America. It was the start of a string of indie hits that eventually attracted the attention of Disney who offered them $80m for ownership of the company in 1993.

The deal initially led to even bigger successes, from Clerks to Pulp Fiction, and in 1997, they won their first best-picture Oscar for The English Patient. Weinstein became a fixture at the Academy Awards, with Shakespeare in Love and Chicago also winning alongside nominations for many other films.

“The only reason we did it was because the studios dominated the industry, so we said, ‘OK, how do you be a maverick?’” he said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. “I’m sure I’m not loved by the Academy establishment, but so be it. Those movies that win, like Moonlight, are a result of some of the work that we did.”

But as Weinstein’s profile grew, so did stories of conflict behind the scenes. He gained a reputation as a difficult control freak, known as “Harvey Scissorhands” for his often brutal edits. “I’m not cutting for fun,” he once said in a New Yorker interview. “I’m cutting for the shit to work. All my life I served one master: the film. I love movies.”

In 2002, he fell out with Frida director Julie Taymor after they disagreed over the results of a test screening. “You are the most arrogant person I have ever met,” he reportedly said to her. “Go market the fucking film yourself!”

In 2008, leaked emails between Weinstein and The Reader director Stephen Daldry revealed a rushed, tense film-making process. “I cannot be party to a process that strips me of my ability to make my work good,” Daldry reportedly wrote. “That is not something you can require of me ... I have to call a halt to this process, this arguing over a date, and simply say that there is a line I will not cross, and this is it.”

The director James Gray had numerous run-ins with Weinstein, most recently when the two disagreed over the 2013 drama The Immigrant, starring Marion Cotillard. Despite positive reviews when it premiered at Cannes, it was belatedly given a small release and is yet to be seen in the UK. “Harvey burying the movie was a very self-destructive act, which was basically an extension of the rejection of him,” Gray told the Telegraph. “It violated his narcissistic principles. When you don’t do exactly what he wants, it doesn’t matter that it’s in his self-interest to protect the film – he doesn’t see it that way.”

Mark Lipsky, who worked as an executive at Miramax, referred to Harvey, and his brother Bob, as “two of the most unrepentant bullies I’d ever met.” (A longtime Weinstein employee, Meryl Poster, later dismissed the accusation, accusing Lipsky of “a history of being bitter over the years since he’s parted from the company” – although she did concede that Harvey had a “history of bad temper”.)

Harvey himself addressed his reputation in an interview with New York magazine in 2004.

“You know, for years I used to read about myself,” he said. “They’d say, ‘He has a temper’ or ‘He’s a bully’ or something like that, and it always bothered me. You know, I always felt guilty about it. Somebody said, ‘The flower bill that is written by Harvey could have’ – you know what I mean – ‘because he needs so many apologies, could fund a small nation.’”

The damning effect of angering film-makers can also be seen in his filmography. After the Weinsteins left Miramax to launch The Weinstein Company, successes have been less frequent. Their most recent films included box-office disappointments Leap, Tulip Fever, 3 Generations, Gold and The Founder, while their forthcoming Benedict Cumberbatch drama, The Current War, received negative reviews at this year’s Toronto film festival.

Still, his so-called flower bill has often remained under-reported because the artists that Harvey has fallen out with have usually been independent film-makers. Big-name stars have tended to gravitate toward Weinstein and his films, even if that relationship is now on shaky ground. In the New York Times article outlining allegations of sexual harassment, the actor Ashley Judd reminisces about an interaction in his hotel room when, she alleges, he tried to massage her and then ask her to watch him take a shower. It also details a 1997 settlement with Scream’s star Rose McGowan after an “incident” in a hotel room. The response to the New York Times report has been swift and damning in the court of public opinion. Lena Dunham praised the “brave” women who have spoken out, while the producer Keith Calder, who dealt with Weinstein on his 2006 horror film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, referred to him as “the worst person in the film business”. CNN’s anchor Jake Tapper quoted an unnamed producer friend who, he said, was “shocked” that it had taken so long for such an exposé to come out. Senator Patrick Leahy was the first politician to give away any money donated by Weinstein towards his campaign for re-election.

And the difficulties for Weinstein appear far from over. Ronan Farrow is rumored to be working on a “lengthy” piece for the New Yorker that has been in production for over a year.

Weinstein has announced a leave of absence from his company, but it is unclear how this will affect his upcoming slate of politically charged films such as Michael Moore’s Donald Trump documentary and a pro-gun control drama with Meryl Streep.

Last year, Weinstein started funding a private foundation to help champion LGBT rights, women’s rights and the increased visibility of female directors within Hollywood, something that he now hopes will help rehabilitate his image. “While this might seem coincidental, it has been in the works for a year,” he said in his statement. “It will be named after my mom and I won’t disappoint her.”