Singer Bjork Reveals Sexual Harassment By Danish Director

Icelandic singer Bjork is the latest female celebrity to speak out about facing sexual harassment from a male in a position of authority, and she details her experience in a candid Facebook post.

In the post, Bjork discusses working with “a Danish director” who made it clear to her that “when I walked into the actress’ profession that my humiliation and role as a lesser sexually harassed being was the norm and set in stone with the director and a staff of dozens who enabled it and encouraged it.”

In her message, Bjork claims that “when I turned the director down repeatedly he sulked and punished me and created for his team an impressive net of illusion where I was framed as the difficult one. Because of my strength, my great team and because I had nothing to lose having no ambitions in the acting world, I walked away from it and recovered in a year’s time.”

However, she admits she is “worried though that other actresses working with the same man did not. ”

According to Bjork, the director — whom she doesn’t name — “was fully aware of this game and I am sure of that. The film he made after was based on his experiences with me. Because i was the first one that stood up to him and didn’t let him get away with it and in my opinion he had a more fair and meaningful relationship with his actresses after my confrontation so there is hope.”

While Bjork doesn’t name the alleged harasser, it should be noted that she has only appeared in two films: the 1990 Icelandic film “The Juniper Tree,” directed by Nietzchka Keene, and 2000’s “Dancer in the Dark,” directed by Lars von Trier, who was born in Denmark.

Interestingly, both Bjork and von Trier have previously discussed the friction between them during production of “Dancer in the Dark”.

In a 2011 interview with GQ, the director griped about Bjork continually showing up late — when she showed up at all.

“She didn’t feel like filming. It cost us a lot of money everyday. And we knew that her and her people would always win because they didn’t care. They didn’t give a s**t,” von Trier told GQ. “It was like dealing with terrorists.”

As he divulged, he got his revenge on a subsequent day of filming, with Bjork having gone through makeup, fully costumed and ready to work — and he decided, instead of filming, to drink schnapps and play tennis.

He admitted that their relationship continued to deteriorate. “I met Bjork one day and instead of saying hello she spat on the ground,” he said, revealing she refused to speak to him. When her assistant finally told him she was ready to talk to him, von Trier explained he was so overcome with “how humiliating this all was” that he “took a chair and there was a big monitor right beside her and I just smashed it. For no reason, or for the reason of the whole thing. And I walked out. What was so strange is that she came to me and for the first time in our whole relationship she was nice to me, and — you won’t believe this — she said ’I want to ask you something — is it OK that I write a song about how much you’ve given me?’ And I didn’t even answer, I remember. Because it was so absurd, because of the violent hostility that we had been through. It was so completely crazy.”