Along with the rest of the acting sorority I’ve been reading with great interest the appalling allegations against Harvey Weinstein, who has apologised for his past behaviour but denied non-consensual sex. At the same time I’ve been reminded of the literally hundreds of times I, too, have endured varying degrees of sexual harassment in my nearly 40-year career. And I bet you won’t find a single actress who hasn’t got similar stories to tell. This behaviour was so commonplace it barely warranted comment except as “jokey” tales female actors would swap.
In 1979 when I gingerly walked on to the set of my first TV drama, a (white, male, as they all were back then) electrician shouted from the gantry, where he busied himself with a light: “Nice big tits on this one, fellas.” This was met with much laughter from the rest of the (all-male) crew. I was surprised and embarrassed but not particularly shocked. My walk home from drama school included a shortcut through a street market peopled by barrow boys all using the same repartee.
On my second TV job, when a props guy bent down in front of me to arrange a bit of set dressing, another crew member shouted across, “Oi, mate, while you’re down there …” and this, too, was met with general amusement.
In 1980 on the set of the first film I did, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a senior crew member to whom I’d never spoken asked me, again for the benefit of the crew, if I would “help him out” as he “hadn’t seen the wife for a bit and was heavy with seed”.
Cut to later that decade, when I was doing a small part in a show starring a household name. I was young and fairly inexperienced, and at the end of my one day on the job, said household name (whose company also produced his show) suggested I come to his trailer to “give him a blow job while he sticks his fingers up my cunt”. We’d never spoken before, not even on set.
Not long after that, I am auditioning for a national theatre tour. I haven’t worked for an entire year and I am absolutely desperate. I’m wearing a mid-calf-length skirt. The producer, a tiny, wizened man in his late 60s approaches from the back of the stalls after I’ve performed my piece and says: “Lift your skirt up, I need to see your legs.” I decline, spurred, pathetically, not by righteous indignation but because I believe that if he saw my imperfect legs then I wouldn’t get the job. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” he barks, “You’re a pretty girl.”
A few years later I’m in New York with some very close, older friends, and I meet their friend, a movie star. He shows no particular interest in me but offers me a lift home in his chauffeured limo. He doesn’t speak to me during the trip but at 4am the phone rings, and it’s him. “I’m sending the car for you,” he says. When I ask why, he screams: “Listen, you know what I want. You’re not the sort of girl I need to take to dinner, just get in the car.” I don’t.
These are a few sample “highlights” but this sort of thing was commonplace. In fact, I’m hard pushed to think of a job (not to mention auditions) during which something sexual, unwarranted and wholly inappropriate did not happen. But not once, ever, did it occur to me to object or complain. For a start, who would I complain to? The desperate rarely find their voice and when the highest currency in the marketplace is one’s impossible-to-quantify “appeal”, how are you going to find the courage to complain about the very person to whom you are hoping to appeal? How does one object to treatment at the hands of the person who has the power to give you the work you so desperately need? The life of an aspiring female actor can be summed up in three words: please like me. And more often than not they will put up with whatever it takes.
Fast-forward to the mid-90s, when I’ve got a bit of a profile thanks to The Fast Show. At the British Comedy Awards, where we are nominated, I find an Oxbridge-educated, hugely successful producer crawling on the carpet almost underneath me. He calls back to his group some feet away: “I’m trying to see if she’s wearing knickers.” Boys will be boys, eh?
Shooting a sketch show, I am the only woman on set when one of my colleagues announces, without prelude: “You see, I sort of want to fuck you but I want to punch you too.” Another colleague rejoins: “Yeah, I know what you mean, me too.” This time I do object – cue cries of, “Come on, it’s a joke, lighten up.” Clearly, I was taking it the wrong way.
In an industry where the idea of meritocracy cannot feasibly be applied, where an independent measure of talent cannot possibly exist, where a person who has no training or experience but who looks amazing can be cast as the lead in a film, then of course it’s going to be fertile ground for people who abuse their power. If you’re a sexual pervert then why not become a producer or director? You’ll get to be alone in a room, entirely legitimately, with girls (or boys) you wouldn’t get close to in a million years if you’d chosen to start up a chain of dry cleaners instead. No one is desperate for a job in dry-cleaning.
I am midway through shooting a BBC sitcom in Glasgow, Two Doors Down. Unlike when I started out, at least 30% of the crew are women. I don’t imagine a single male member of our crew or cast would dream of making a lewd comment – not because it doesn’t occur to them but because the presence of women in film and TV crews means the wolf-whistle culture no longer prevails.
But there still aren’t anything like enough visible, powerful women represented on, or working within, film and TV, and that has got to change. We need to be the change. No man was ever going to expose Harvey Weinstein. It’s down to women in all walks of life to complain every single time we see a woman poorly represented on screen. We need to call out the disgusting treatment of women by people in power every single time we witness it and we need to risk not being liked for doing so. We need to be the change we want to see.
• Arabella Weir is a comedy writer/performer
