Lena Headey has accused Hollywood of continuing to shield predatory men because of the power they hold over actors desperate to keep working, saying the dynamic still makes her furious years after the #MeToo movement first exposed it. Speaking during a New York interview this week, the 50-year-old actress said the industry still protects powerful abusers at the expense of vulnerable performers trying to build careers.
“The weird protection that we offer predatory men in the business, because of the disproportionate power they wield set against the need among vulnerable actresses to work to put food on the table to get the job, it makes me very angry,” she said. “A job can be completely soured by one person who, for some reason, is allowed to get away with it.” She credited the 2017 #MeToo movement with revealing how widespread that pattern had become, saying it took the scandal for people to realize “this is everywhere.”
Headey has previously said Harvey Weinstein spoke to her suggestively at the Venice Film Festival in 2005 and later attempted to lure her to a Los Angeles hotel room under the pretext of a script meeting. Weinstein is currently serving a prison sentence following multiple sexual assault convictions. Those experiences shaped Headey’s new eight-part BBC Sounds drama, Intimacy, which she wrote, directed and stars in. The series follows an intimacy coordinator who takes a dream job on a film set only to discover the director is the man responsible for a past assault.
The Cersei Lannister actress also revisited an entirely different kind of backlash, recalling how furious some Game of Thrones fans became when they learned a body double had replaced her for nude scenes starting in the show’s fifth season. “I was really shocked by the anger, by this idea that I’d duped the audience,” she said, noting that by then she was surrounded by roughly 3,000 extras on location and had grown weary of the exposure. She said younger castmates lacked the experience to deflect that kind of scrutiny the way she eventually learned to.
Headey’s remarks land as debate over intimacy coordinators continues across the industry, with actors including Sean Bean and Ian McKellen questioning whether the role interferes with performance, while others credit it with making sets safer.
