In the early 2000s, Patricia Clarkson’s career was embarrassing wealth. Three of his films were created at the Sundance Film Festival 2003, including two, “The Station Agent” and “Pieces of April”, would become acclaimed during the prize season.
But Clarkson told Business Insider that the acclamation would be accompanied by “threatening” from the film of the cinema at the time, Harvey Weinstein, who, after an argument with the actor, promised that she would never work again.
Before the 2004 Oscars, Weinstein had plotted an Oscar campaign for Clarkson’s performance in “The Station Agent”. The indie on a low budget featured Clarkson in front of the time, Peter Dinklage and Bobby Cannavale as a trio of foreigners who build a friendship in an abandoned New Jersey station.
Although Clarkson is clearly the female example of the film, Clarkson said Weinstein wanted her to enter the easiest actress category. Clarkson pushed back.
Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale in “The Station Agent”. Miramax movies
“I hate when the actors got into false categories,” Clarkson told Bi when he asked the fight with Weinstein. “I think it is something that must be addressed by the academy. Too often, it happens. When you support, you should really be a support player, and when you are the main one, you have to intensify and enter a more difficult category. I was the main one in the station agent ”, so I said:” No, Harvey, I don’t support it. “
That year, there was an additional motivation for Clarkson to campaign in the main category: she already received the best campaign of the Oscars of the support actress of United Artists for her other film, “Pieces of April”, in which she played a mother trying to reconnect with her distant daughter, played by Katie Holmes.
“I definitely support it,” recalls Clarkson. “Katie Holmes is clearly the head of this film. So I competed against Harvey, and he told me that I would never work again.”
Clarkson said that she was holding her ground despite the threat of Weinstein. “It has become very ugly,” she added.
An attempt to contact Weinstein, who serves a 16 -year sentence for charges of sexual assault, has not succeeded. Weinstein’s representative had no comments.
In the end, Clarkson obtained an Oscars appointment for “Pieces of April” in the actress category the best support – but she has never forgotten this meeting with Weinstein.
It was one of the reasons why she wanted to play the editor of the New York Times Rebecca Corbett in the 2022 film “According to Said”, which told the New York Times investigation in 2017 which exposed the history of Maltraitance of Weinstein and sexual misconduct against women.
Patricia Clarkson, Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan in “She said”. Universal images
Clarkson told Bi that she did not often talk about the incident with Weinstein, adding that many women were more severely and physically enlarged.
“It was leg for me, what I experienced with Harvey. It was always difficult and terrible what he did to me, but compared to so many women who lived much more, it was strange to talk about it,” she said. Asked if the incident motivated her to continue, “she said,” she replied categorically. “Of course, it was a motivation to do,” she said. “Of course, it was.”
A New York jury condemned Weinstein of sexual crimes in 2020 and sentenced him to 23 years in prison. A new trial is currently underway after the highest New York Court canceled its conviction last year.
He remains in prison by serving 16 years, because his conviction in California for three accusations of sexual assault still arises. In both cases, Weinstein pleaded not guilty and argued that all sexual meetings were consensual.
