Actress Lauren Holly Recounts Inappropriate Hotel-Room Experience With Harvey Weinstein: ‘I Pushed Him and Ran’

Lauren Holly. Photo: Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for AHA

In a story that Lauren Holly says has become “all too familiar,” the actress, who starred in Harvey Weinstein’s Beautiful Girls in 1996, says she also had an encounter with the former studio head that turned ugly. Appearing on Canadian talk show The Social on Monday, Holly says the incident happened in the late ’90s when she was in her 30s and had been acquaintances with Weinstein at that point. As he’d done with many other of his accusers, Weinstein had set up a meeting with Holly in his hotel room to discuss roles for her in future Weinstein-produced films. “It was not abnormal at all,” she says, recalling the Champagne and “small talk” that began the meeting. But when Weinstein asked to be excused, she says he returned wearing the hotel bathrobe and gestured for her to follow him to the bedroom. There, she says, the talk continued to remain professional even as he “dropped his robe, went into the bathroom in front of me, and began to use the toilet.” “At this my point, my head’s exploding,” she remembers thinking as Weinstein began showering while still asking her questions about potential roles.

Holly says the moment Weinstein exited the shower and approached her while naked was when “everything changed.” She claims Weinstein then told her she needed a massage because she appeared “stressed” and then asked her to give him one. She recalls him saying, “It would be bad for [her] career” if she left and that she needed to “keep him as [her] ally.” In order to leave, Holly says she “pushed him and ran.” She told “influential people in Hollywood” at a dinner party later that night what happened with Weinstein, but was advised that, since he didn’t assault her: “You need to keep your mouth shut because it’s Harvey Weinstein.” Years later, Holly says Weinstein tried to meet with her when they were staying at the same hotel, but she avoided him at all costs. She now wonders if distancing herself from the mogul cost her film roles: “I felt like he was dangling that freeze-out … You don’t know what’s in the head of a monster.”