Canadian actress Rachel McAdams has gone public with an experience she says she had with writer-director James Toback, who's reportedly been accused by some 200 women of sexual harassment.
McAdams tells Vanity Fair magazine she was a 21-year-old theatre school student in Toronto when she was invited to audition for Toback for a role in the 2001 film "Harvard Man."
The London, Ont., native alleges that after the audition, Toback wanted to rehearse with her more and insisted she meet him at his hotel room that night because he was flying out the next day.
"Pretty quickly the conversation turned quite sexual and he said, 'You know, I just have to tell you. I have masturbated countless times today thinking about you since we met at your audition,'" McAdams says in the article, which was published online Thursday.
Later, Toback asked her to show him her pubic hair, McAdams alleges.
She says she eventually left and feels "very lucky" that he didn't physically assault her.
McAdams says she told her agent about the meeting the next day.
"I can't believe he did it again," McAdams says her agent responded. "This isn't the first time that this has happened. He did this the last time that he was in town. He did this to one of my other actresses."
McAdams says that made her angry and feeling "kind of thrown into the lion's den and given no warning that he was a predator."
"Sexual harassment is so pervasive" in Hollywood and has "got to stop," says McAdams in the piece.
"We need to start acknowledging what an epidemic this is, and what a deep-seated problem this is. You have to get it all out in the open and in the light so that we can really understand how pervasive this is. "
Vanity Fair says Toback, who received an Oscar nomination for writing "Bugsy," had no comment on any of the allegations when reached by phone on Wednesday.
Allegations against Toback first surfaced on Sunday in the Los Angeles Times, which reported at the time that 38 women had accused him of sexual harassment, including Canadian actress Chantal Cousineau.
The 72-year-old denied the allegations to the Los Angeles Times, saying he never met any of the women, or if he had it "was for five minutes and (I) have no recollection."
— With files from The Associated Press
Comments