Popular Hollywood actor Kate Beckinsale recalled numerous instances of ill-treatment in a lengthy Instagram video.
Beckinsale's recollection of numerous dark episodes during her growth as an actor comes in the wake of Blake Lively's lawsuit against her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni, wherein she alleged sexual harassment and a smear campaign.
The Pearl Harbor and Underworld star revealed that she was once forced to do a photoshoot soon after suffering a miscarriage.
"I've been forced by a publicist to do a photo shoot the day after I'd had a miscarriage. I said, 'I can't, I'm bleeding. I don't want to go and change my clothes in front of people I don't know and do a photo shoot. I'm bleeding out a miscarriage.' And she was like, 'You have to, or you'll be sued'," she said in the video.
She also remembered a time when her male co-star used to come to the sets late and drunk, and she was forced to endure a long wait for his convenience and subjected to verbal abuse from him.
"My co-star is drunk every day, and he's obviously going through something, and I have full sympathy for that. But I'm also waiting, as is the whole crew, six hours a day for him to learn his lines, and it means I'm not getting to see my daughter in the evenings ever for the whole movie," she said.
Instead of acknowledging her troubles, the studio gave her a bicycle to move around while she waited.
The 51-year-old actor stressed the need for everyone's grievances to be acknowledged and taken seriously in every industry and "not punished when something egregious happens to them at work."
Beckinsale also said there was an instance where she was assaulted, at age 18, but even her female colleagues refused to take her seriously, adding that it becomes hard when "a woman complains about something legitimately offensive, upsetting, harmful or whatever in this industry."
She captioned the video post: "Complaining about abuse should not beget more abuse, particularly at work where there should be inviolable safeguarding in place, and it should not be expected of women who have been harmed, insulted, hurt, shamed or in any other way abused (mostly with at least 100 witnesses) to have to be 'one of the boys' and take it on the chin or face retribution for having been abused in the first place."
