Some actresses offer to sleep with directors to win roles: Sir Ian McKellen

Hollywood veteran Sir Ian McKellen has said women are partly responsible for the scandal surfacing in the industry.

Contactmusic.com quoted the 78-year-old actor as saying that actresses in the 1960s pitching for work would write DRR - director's rights respected - on their headshots as a coded offer of sex for parts.

While speaking at the Oxford Union, McKellen said, "People must be called out and it's sometimes very difficult for victims to do that. I hope we're going through a period that will help to eradicate it altogether. But from my own experience, when I was starting acting in the early sixties, the director of the theatre I was working at showed me some photographs he got from women who were wanting jobs, some of them had at the bottom of their photograph 'DRR' - directors' rights respected."

The 'Mr Holmes' star added, "In other words, if you give me a job, you can have sex with me."

He also shared that he is worried "nothing good will come of the current Hollywood sexual misconduct allegations.

The 'Vicious' star hopes it will be "eradicated altogether", but in reality, he is less hopeful that this would be the case.

Sir Ian McKellen, who workd with Kevin Spacey in 2004, when Spacey was artistic director at the 'Old Vic in London' said that the timing of Spacey's own coming out was not ideal.

"The circumstances in which he chose to do it are reprehensible because it linked alleged underage sex with a declaration of sexuality," explained the 'Da Vinci Code' star.

Following the misconduct allegations surrounding 65-year-old Weinstein, Hollywood stars including Brett Ratner, Louis C.K., and Jeremy Piven have also been accused of abusing their positions of power.

Most recently, Matt Lauer was fired from his position as host of the 'Today' show after there was a "detailed complaint by a colleague", who accused Lauer of behaving inappropriately.

Since then, several of other high profile men have been accused of inappropriate behaviour, including Kevin Spacey, George HW Bush, Dustin Hoffman, Steven Seagal and Jeffrey Tambor.