The 'Mountain Between Us' actress says excluding the embattled movie honcho from her thank-you note at the 2009 Academy Awards was 'absolutely deliberate.'
- Oct 16, 2017
AceShowbiz - Kate Winslet didn't thank Harvey Weinstein when she won Best Actress for her role in The Weinstein Company's "The Reader" at the Academy Awards back in 2009. It turned out that excluding the producer from her thank-you note wasn't an accident.
Eight years after her big win, the actress revealed in a new interview with Los Angeles Times that she did it deliberately because of her unpleasant experience with the producer. She was not a fan of the movie honcho because he was rude and a bully.
"That was deliberate. That was absolutely deliberate," she said. "I remember being told. 'Make sure you thank Harvey if you win.' And I remember turning around and saying, 'No I won't. No I won't.' And it was nothing to do with not being grateful. If people aren't well-behaved, why would I thank him?"
"The fact that I'm never going to have to deal with Harvey Weinstein again as long as I live is one of the best things that's ever happened and I'm sure the feeling is universal," the 42-year-old star continued.
"For my whole career, Harvey Weinstein, whenever I've bumped into him, he'd grab my arm and say, 'Don't forget who gave you your first movie.' Like I owe him everything," she said, referring to her first role in Miramax's 1994 "Heavenly Creatures". "Then later, with 'The Reader,' same thing, 'I'm gonna get you that Oscar nomination, I'm gonna get you a win, I'm gonna win for you.' "
"But that's how he operated," the actress added. "He was bullying and nasty. Going on a business level, he was always very, very hard to deal with - he was rude. He used to call my female agent a [vulgar name for a woman] every time he spoke to her on the telephone."
Kate Winslet was one of the first actresses to condemn Harvey Weinstein after he was exposed as a sexual predator. "I had hoped that these kind of stories were just made up rumors, maybe we have all been naive," she previously said.
