With me, stephen sackur. This city and los angeles are the twin capitals of americas giant movie, media and entertainment business. A business that has been rocked by allegations of systemic sexism, misogyny and abusive behaviour. My guest today is ashleyjudd, the actor and activist, and one of the first women to go public with her accusations about the mega producer, Harvey Weinstein. What began with voices of anger and pain has become a movement, demanding radical change. How far can it go . Theme music playing ashleyjudd, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you. In recent weeks and months, something quite extraordinary has happened. Kickstarted, i suppose, by the allegations concerning Harvey Weinstein, and what we see now is the growth of a Real Movement of women speaking out. Are you satisfied that this has come about or are you deeply frustrated that it has taken so long for this to come about, what is your overriding emotion right now . Joy just unmitigated, electrifying joy. I am so happy. I am so happy that its here. I have been telling the story for a long time, since the moment it happened in fact, my particular example of harassment with Harvey Weinstein. Im a teller, to use the words that laura dern used on stage at the Golden Globes, im a tattler. You know, i was molested when i was seven years old and the first thing i did was go to a grown up and say hey, thisjust happened. And as is so often the case, i was told this is an old man, thats not what he meant. But i somehow managed to stay absolutely authentic in my truth in knowing something terrible had happened, and that is why i am such a crusader for gender equality and the full eradication of gender and sexual based violence. I experienced it as a youth, i experienced it in hollywood, it has been the core of my work 15 years and now that this movement has collectivised and catalysed and is here, it is incredibly gratifying to me. If we just stick with weinstein for a moment, what happened to you with harvey happened in 1997, but the truth your story and so many other peoples stories has only emerged in the last few months. So what happened to the telling that you did at the time . No one could hear me. And i told the story in great detail to variety magazine two years to the month prior to the publication of the New York Times piece, and everyone knew that i was talking about harvey, he was named in the comments that were posted on varietys website. Sometimes people called him by name, sometimes they used loosely disguised names like shmarvey schmeinstein. But you didnt name him in the piece . No, i didnt name him in the piece. I was talking with variety in their women in film issue, powerful women in hollywood issue, whatever they call it. The journalist asked the question had i ever been been harassed . I was like not yes, but hell yes. Everyone in the room with me, my team was like no. Of course im going to tell the story, my dad was with me when it happened i came straight from the hotel to the lobby and told my dad immediately what had happened, including everyone that night with whom i was filming on kiss the girls, the director, writer and producer. All of whom over the years have discussed it in an ongoing way with me, and itsjust that now the world could hear. And the pattern is clear from so many of the different stories. Weinstein often operating out of a hotel room, summoning a female actor to his room, then appearing in the bathrobe and demanding different acts which were clearly of a sexual nature. You fled when that pretty much happened to you. Were you then, for a long time, frightened of Harvey Weinstein . I was not frightened of Harvey Weinstein, and i think that is why he blackballed me. I think thats why he blacklisted me and did unfortunately, as we know now, did such a successfuljob sabotaging my career as he continued to harass me between 1997 and 1999 and i have other examples and i havent gone into detail because i dont want to give it oxygen. You know what i have to do, i have to say that he continues to absolutely deny in any of the cases that have been discussed in the last few months, that he ever acted in a way that was not consensual when it came to sexual activity. Right, and he also hasnt denied that he harassed me and in fact, he has apologised for it. In my particular example, what he said, a direct quote, he didnt lay a glove on me. And he didnt because as you noticed i was able to flee the room, he harassed me, he abused his power, and he lorded it over me, you know, this imbalance between us, with vitriol and abuse of charm for two years, and then all of a sudden. So you continued to see him . Well, i would bump into him at the hotel, i would bump into him at different events and he was always like wink wink, i will find that great part for you. At the premiere of doublejeopardy in 1999, i had reached the up with which i could no longer put. Ill always remember this because Barbara Walters was to my right, and i wondered if on an unconscious level having a powerful woman standing near me helped inflame my own audacious courage because i started to go at him. I literally started to go at him and was getting ready to call him out in front of whoever happened to hear, to be within the distance, whatever i am trying to say. He knew it and he said, you know, im going to let you out of that little deal we made. I said, you do that harvey. You do that. He never bothered me again, but of course he blacklisted me, which peterjackson and fran walsh have since confirmed. He says that he received information that you and another actress miro sorvino were difficult, that you and miro should not be touched because you were too demanding and too difficult and peterjackson has since said i took that information and i wish i hadnt. But does it leave you feeling that your career has, in a substantial way, been ruined by this man . Not ruined, but definitely impacted. Definitely impacted. I deeply appreciate peter and frans apology and that they wrote me a very detailed letter with an absolute blow by blow timeline of what happened and what was said and how it was confusing for them, because this notion that i was difficult didnt match their experience of me personally. It really, it is in a way, its a relief because it explains what previously had been inexplicable, why i was always on that, at the time, i was the highest paid female actor in hollywood. And then when i was on that shortlist, and it wasjulia roberts, Sandy Bullock and me and a couple of other people, without explanation it would come down to it that i wouldnt get the offer and we now know why. Again, miramax have denied that they put out a blacklist or blackballed individuals including yourself. There are a lot of contradictions in there and other people have since come forward and said yes, that is what we heard. Yes, we had a feeling it wasnt true. But the good news is i have such a robust life and i have a great curiosity about the world, and in a way that led me to the humanitarian work that i have been doing so passionately for all of these years since. And i have been to 18 countries around the world, in particular i visited congo and rwanda multiple times and i spent a month in india last year, ive been to the warzone in ukraine and jordan recently, im on my way to bangladesh and sri lanka. To use an expression used in texas, i dont know if yall know it. But ive made a hand. A good hand for myself. In a sense, you are saying it certainly modified the trajectory of your life. It did, yes. It did. Lets talk about the somewhat Bigger Picture because this is part of something much bigger. In a fascinating ted talk that you delivered last year, you talked of sexism, of misogyny, of vile, violent abuse that you had been getting online. And this is nothing to do with the specifics of the weinstein case, i think much of it dates back to some twitter comments you had put up about a basketball game. Yes, that was an ovarian moment, i decided i had to up my game. I was at a kentucky basketball game, that is my team, celtic is my football team. I didnt like a piece of refereeing and i said something about it in a tweet and all of a sudden it went viral, and what is called a cyber mob and suddenly, it was rape threats and decapitation threats and death threats, and just all kinds of extraordinarily misogynistic it was hate speech. It was hate speech and i decided to write about it. What about your attitudes today about men . You know, raped as a girl, suffered at the hands of, it seems, people like Harvey Weinstein. What is your feeling today about relations between men and women . So i could have just cut you off at the beginning and said i love men. I do. I love boys and men. The problem is toxic masculinity. The problem is the patriarchy of the system that we all live in, including me. I think that the patriarchy is as constraining and limiting to boys and men as it is to girls and women. And that yall may not see it that way because when one is entitled and has privilege and seems to have a status that affords different kinds of power and licences, that that actually is as limiting and unfulfilling to boys and men as it is to girls and women. The Metoo Campaign, that has arisen since this focus on hollywood and misogyny and sexism and abuse began, the Metoo Campaign, according to some women, has gone too far. If i quote to you one American Writer and journalist, claire burlinski, she says mass hysteria has set in, its become a classic moral panic. And one that is ultimately as dangerous to women as to men. Can you see where shes coming from at all . I think that there is always room for critique and that we can be spacious enough in our perspective to hold paradox and to hold dissent. There may be something to learn from that and she may also, in my opinion, simply have missed the point. And. You know, theres. I suppose one of the points is about the inflation about different kinds of behaviours. Conflation. This alleged criminality of Harvey Weinstein and then there is what other women writers have called the presumptuousness and boorishness that women have seen in men and dealt with men for time immemorial. Is there a danger of conflating different behaviours and criminalising some behaviours which, while many women regard them as unacceptable, are not criminal . I think its fantastic to have the conversation and starting to articulate and identify and really and have a gradient of behaviours and understand that there is a spectrum of behaviour. Thats so important. Unless we talk about this and tease each part of it out, we cant understand what is unacceptable and what is, and we also need the lexicon for describing the behaviour. Yesterday i switched my tv on and there was news of another actor, james franco, who has been the subject of a number of different accusations from women, mostly online. James francos response is look, hey, i didnt do the things that i am accused of but if i did in the past behave badly, then i am going to work my very hardest to put things right. I wonder now about the atmosphere that you see in your industry and in entertainment and other industries too where, it seems that some men feel that they are, in a sense, being presumed guilty without due process. I think that whatjames said is terrific, and i think that weve all behaved at a certain level unconsciously, and done things that were insensitive, inappropriate, without necessarily understanding that they were. I mean, weve all operated with a certain amount of tone deafness. And i like the culpability, and we have to have restorative justice. This is about men and women being all together, and having a more equitable and just workplace, home life, social spaces. I mean, we know that when women are empowered in the workplace, and are in Decision Making positions, that workplaces have better financial outcomes, and theres less harassment when there is more diversity. And it takes that kind of individual accountability to collectively make the change, on a large scale. This is political, though, isnt it, for you . Absolutely. You have become very political in that you are a goodwill ambassador for the Population Fund at the united nations. You travel the world, as youve said, often addressing womens groups and talking to women and girls about the need for them to be part of a campaign to deliver better lives across the world for females. Look at the United States. How much work does there need to be in the United States on these issues . A ton, a ton. Our teen pregnancy is skyrocketing. We have some of the highest teen pregnancy in the developed world. You know, we dont have paid family leave, except at individual companies, whove had the courage to lead internally, and im very aware that we have Great Strides to be made here. I mean, there are 49 countries in the world that dont have laws prohibiting intimate partner and domestic violence, and while we do have laws against it, they too need to be more evenly enforced. And our restraining orders are in some instances quite ineffective, and grant the abuser all kinds of freedom of movement, but constrain the victim to certain hours and safe zones. Well, it was very striking at the Golden Globes the other day. You and many other leading actors were dressed in black, and many of you invited as your guests, activists from different spheres across the United States, representing all sorts of different ethnic and working groups of women. And i know that the Metoo Campaign said that one of its absolute driving forces was the correspondence it had had with 700,000 female farmworkers whom it was determined to draw into this campaign for equality, equal pay, womens rights. Do you think, in all honesty, that you and other movie stars, and very famous women, are best placed to be relatable, and to deliver real change, for people like the female farmworkers of america . I believe were best placed to clean up our own industry, and were doing that. You know, were writing codes of conduct across unions and our business so that, for example, business meetings can no longer take place in hotel rooms. And were working for equal representation, both behind the camera and in front of the camera. Were working towards equal pay. You have miles to go on all of that. We have miles to go, and im so glad that the story about the disparity of pay between the great michelle williams, whos been nominated for two 0scars, and Mark Wahlberg has come out, because i knew those facts myself, and it wasnt my story to tell. And its so egregious, im grateful its become public. Now, are we the most relatable, are we the most well placed . I dont know. They reached out to us, and our collective and individual empathy and understanding is absolutely with them. You know, we responded to their identification with us, because, you know, it doesnt. Whether its the server who gets her bum pinched, or the factory worker whos harassed by the line boss, or the female janitor whos trapped in a building after hours with men who threaten her, we experience it in the brain stem the same way. Any kind of threat is a physiological experience, and it doesnt matter what the pay is, or what the setting is. Men and women experience it the same, and thats really what were addressing. Trump and his supporters do tend to portray people in your business as out of touch elites, liberals who know nothing, frankly, of the lives of white, working class americans in middle america. Do you think that faultline could be dangerous if it develops further . I am from eastern kentucky, and my people have been there for ten generations, and i grew up around the coal mines. I live in rural middle tennessee, surrounded by folks who voted for our current president. I think that i am uniquely positioned as an american to understand all kinds of people, from all backgrounds and all classes, and all levels of achievement. Well, lets just continue the politics conversation a little further. You, it is reported, seriously considered running for the senate, in i think 2013, 20122013. Do you still feel there might be a political career for you . I want to be useful. You know, i want to be useful to my fellows, and to the god of my understanding, and i like to think im willing to do whatever it takes to be useful. It seems right now im in the right space, and i wouldnt rule it out. And its not a coy answer, i just dont know. I was very serious at the time, and then a young person in my family came to live with me. I was given an opportunity to help finish raising a 16 year old child, and thats why i chose not to run, and im very content with that decision. I think Mitch Mcconnell needs to be unseated. Im really hoping a democrat can win the seat that has been vacated by bob corker. I am supporting a candidate in marshs seat, as he has been held hostage for so many years. But right now, im not a candidate. And would you back oprah winfrey, for example . Much talk post Golden Globes of her being possible president ial material, if she wanted, if she has ambition. If she. You know, shes clearly a genuinely exceptional human being, and she has a capacity to bring people together, which is maybe the single greatest balm and healing glue that our nation needs right now. What i really heard, and what she said the other night, and i was mere feet away from her, was one person can spark change, that then inflames a second person, who may go on to do something that changes the whole world. Lets end by returning to your own industry, and yourfuture in it. Having experienced what you experienced, do you want a future in it . I do i love acting, i love being creative. And its given me so much, given me the opportunity to work with the unfpa, and working with organisations around the world that help Bring Reproductive Health and access to hundreds and millions of women who dont have it, and of course, thats the key to eradicating poverty. And i love being creative. Yes, but you have said it yourself. You work in an industry where i think, of the top 100 grossing movies of 2016, only 6 were made by women. Women are still, compared to men, underpaid in all the different aspects of your industry. And of those 6 , only four were women of colour. But salma hayek and i have enjoyed a p