The actor Katherine Kendall has revealed how the fear of being “blackballed” by Hollywood’s powerbrokers stopped her from making claims of sexual harassment.

Kendall, 48, publicly alleged earlier this month that Harvey Weinstein had harassed her in his apartment in 1993, claiming that the producer “literally chased me” and stopped her from getting past him to reach the door.

In an interview recorded in July and obtained by the Observer, Kendall refers to inappropriate behaviour from a powerful unnamed producer and reveals she was “scared” to go public because of how she might be subsequently treated or viewed.

“You make yourself a target in a way – I was awful scared that I would be judged, even blackballed. They could make it so you don’t work,” she said.

Kendall said that at the time of the alleged attack, complaints of sexual harassment by women were routinely dismissed. “If you were a woman who complained about someone harassing you, people laughed at you. You didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

Another factor that stopped Kendall, best known for her starring role in the 1996 film Swingers, from speaking out for 25 years was the fear that it would attract significant scrutiny of her and that people would cast her as a victim.

“I never went to the press because I was too scared. I didn’t want attention brought on me for that, intuitively I didn’t want it. I don’t like to talk about my personal life too much.”

In the interview, Kendall also says the harassment affected her more profoundly than she expected, describing how the experience can leave women “shattered”.

She said: “People don’t realise that those things can be scary, sometimes it’s downright scary and can leave a woman shattered, fragmented … I was more scared more than I thought I would be. My insides were shaken up a little more more than I thought they would be – and I thought I was kind of tough.” Another reason for not going public was shame, said Kendall. “When someone perpetrates against another person like that it actually makes the person who got perpetrated upon feel ashamed in a certain way.”

Meanwhile, it has emerged that six months after Fox News had ousted its chairman amid a sexual harassment scandal, the network’s top-rated host at the time, Bill O’Reilly, struck a $32m agreement with a longtime network analyst to settle new sexual harassment allegations, according to the New York Times. Although the deal has not been previously made public, the network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, has acknowledged it was aware of the woman’s complaints about O’Reilly.

In an interview with the Washington Post last week, Kendall revealed she had decided to go on the record over Weinstein’s alleged attack, after Ashley Judd had come forward with her story about the producer, the first leading actor to do so.

More than 50 women have so far accused Weinstein of sexual harassment, unwanted attention or rape. He denies allegations of criminal sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault. Accounts of his alleged attack on Kendall claim the producer invited the aspiring actor to a screening, after which he asked her to go to his apartment to pick something up. Kendall then claims Weinstein chased her naked around his flat and asked if she would at least show him her breasts, to which she repeatedly said no.

In the interview, given four months before the slew of allegations against Weinstein emerged, Kendall talked about the methods employed by sexual predators in the film industry. “He’ll tell you: ‘So and so made out with me and so and so did this with me.’ Famous people try and lure you in to make [you] think you should do it: ‘Hey, they did it so you should do it.’ But there is never any consequences for these people, they have power.