![]() Now it is you who give me strength and conviction. ![]() Through the years, brave fans have regularly shared with me how some of my characters have given them the conviction to stand up to their abusers. I like to think of myself as a tough Boston chick, in many ways I suppose not unlike Faith, Missy, or Echo. ![]() Nevertheless, Hollywood also failed to protect me, a child actress. "Hollywood has been very good to me in many ways. It's a stark reminder of how deeply embedded horrors like this have become, and how easily they've been brushed aside in the past.ĭushku concludes her post on a hopeful note. In a moment that has seen all manner of awful stories come to light, Dushku's account nonetheless stands out. Whereas he was supposed to be my protector, he was my abuser." "My life was literally in his hands: he hung me in the open air, from a tower crane, atop an office tower, 25+ stories high. On a daily basis he rigged wires and harnesses on my 12 year old body," Dushku wrote. "To be clear, over the course of those months rehearsing and filming True Lies, it was Joel Kramer who was responsible for my safety on a film that at the time broke new ground for action films. It's not clear what was said to Kramer, who Dushku says gave her the on-set nickname of "Jailbait," but she was injured later that same day. The post then goes on to describe how Dushku was later injured in a stunt accident after a female industry friend she'd shared the story with visited the True Lies set. I remember how he laid me down on the bed, wrapped me with his gigantic writhing body, and rubbed all over me. ![]() I remember what I was wearing (my favorite white denim shorts, thankfully, secured enough for me to keep on). I remember vividly how he methodically drew the shades and turned down the lights how he cranked up the air-conditioning to what felt like freezing levels, where exactly he placed me on one of the two hotel room beds, what movie he put on the television (Coneheads) how he disappeared in the bathroom and emerged, naked, bearing nothing but a small hand towel held flimsy at his mid-section. Instead, he subjected her to an experience that is so burned into memory, she's able to relate the smallest details even now, 25 years later. He was supposed to take her to the stunt crew's swimming pool, and then out for a sushi dinner. Hollywood is in a unique position of actually shining a spotlight on it.Dushku writes in detail about the way Kramer built trust with her on the set, and then used that trust to secure parental permission for some alone time with the young actor. “All of us collectively as a human race have to do this. “Hollywood needs to create a safe avenue for people to speak up, that they feel safe from anybody who might be a predator or an abuser, and that it is encouraged and there’s no shame around it, and that there will be consequences,” he said. But the industry also needs to develop better safeguards and better systems for allowing victims to come forward without risk. Hollywood has a unique platform for raising awareness about sexual assault and discrimination through storytelling, he said. “Maybe out of this can come some education that will pull some men who would otherwise go down that path back from the brink.” “This is kind of a great moment in history, unfortunately it’s founded on personal tragedies,” he said. Such a system is important for victims and hopefully as a deterrent to aberrant behavior.īecause sexual harassment is a pervasive cultural issue - “this s-‘s been going on since Day One,” he observed - the current outpouring offers a chance for education and hopefully enlightenment. The lesson of the extraordinary shakeup in Hollywood amid the current wave of sexual harassment and assault accusations leveled at powerful figures is that more needs to be done to establish an effective system for reporting abuses. “Directors are historically pretty oblivious to the interpersonal things on their set, being so focused on what they’re doing creatively,” he said.”The fact that this was happening under our noses and we didn’t know about it” is troubling, he said. The famed director of “Terminator,” “Titanic” and the “Avatar” franchise said directors tend to be so laser-focused on the needs of the production that they don’t take notice of much else while working on a movie.
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