Mira Sorvino faced harassment when she was 16

American actress Mira Sorvino, who has accused Harvey Weinstein of sexually harassing her in the 1990s, has now opened up about an incident involving a casting director, claiming he gagged her with a condom during an audition when she was 16.

In an interview with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's "HFPA In Conversation" podcast, the Oscar-winning actress, a supporter of the #MeToo movement, has shared her personal experience with harassment in the industry, reports pagesix.com.

"In looking back over at my career, I realised that one of my very first auditions when I was 16, I was completely treated inappropriately by the casting director," the now-50-year-old said.

"In order to scare me for this horror movie scene, he tied me to a chair, he bruised my arm, and I was 16 years old, and then he gagged me, and I was all game because I'm trying to be scared for the scene.

"And at the end he takes the gag out of my mouth and he said, 'Sorry for the prophylactic', so he had gagged me with a condom," claimed Sorvino, who did not name the casting director or movie.

While she "was too young to even know what a condom tasted like", she now says "it was so inappropriate" and has questioned "what the heck was a casting director doing with a condom in his pocket in an audition?"

Sorvino said that the audition was one of her first "introductions to how the acting system works" and explained that "when you're young, you don't question."

"When you're young, you're like, 'Oh okay, I've got to be tough, I've got to be down to really perform, and if that means they need me to go this extra mile' - and you see many times we have awards given to people for giving particularly raw performances in very brutal, sexual scenes or things like that," said the "Mighty Aphrodite" star.

"There's that aesthetic of letting go of the self and trying to submit yourself for the art. People take advantage of that. People have always taken advantage of that," added Sorvino, who went on to share there have been "other situations that have happened throughout" her career.

--IANS

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