In a New York Times opinion piece, Salma Hayek became the latest woman to come forward with sexual harassment allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein.

In the devastating article, Hayek details her experience making the film Frida with Weinstein and Miramax. She explains that she originally fought hard to work with Weinstein on the project; in the subsequent deal, Weinstein agreed to pay for the rights, but even though Hayek was a producer, she would not receive any payment for that work.

"I did not care about the money; I was so excited to work with him and that company," Hayek writes. "He had taken a chance on me—a nobody. He had said yes."

Chillingly, she describes how her excitement gave way to something else, after he started making requests including one to let him give her oral sex:

Little did I know it would become my turn to say no.

No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn't even involved with.

No to me taking a shower with him.

No to letting him watch me take a shower.

According to Hayek, her refusals made Weinstein angry, to the extent that he eventually threatened her, saying, "I will kill you, don't think I can't." He also told the actress he would recast her role. "In his eyes, I was not an artist," she writes. "I wasn't even a person. I was a thing: Not a nobody, but a body."

Hayek describes a traumatizing experience on the set of Frida where she felt forced to do to a sex scene with another woman, which included full-frontal nudity, just to get Weinstein to continue making the movie. "It was clear to me he would never let me finish this movie without him having his fantasy one way or another. There was no room for negotiation."

When she arrived on set that day, Hayek says she had a nervous breakdown and was vomiting and shaking uncontrollably; she took a tranquilizer in order to complete the scene. "By the time the filming of the movie was over, I was so emotionally distraught that I had to distance myself during the postproduction," she writes.

In the end, Hayek and Frida director Julie Taymor had to fight with Weinstein to get him to open the film in just one theater in New York and eventually another in Los Angeles. The film went on to win Weinstein two Oscars—and earn Hayek a Best Actress nomination.

"When I saw him socially, I'd smile and try to remember the good things about him, telling myself that I went to war and I won," she explains. "But why do so many of us, as female artists, have to go to war to tell our stories when we have so much to offer? Why do we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity?"

Hayek ends the piece with a call for equality, saying that until men and women are valued equally in the film industry, Hollywood will continue to be conducive to predators. Read her article in full here.

From: ELLE US