Among the many things that ex-spouses Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt didn’t see eye-to-eye about was Pitt working Harvey Weinstein, knowing about Jolie’s allegations that he had tried to sexually assault her when she was a young actress.
In an eye-opening interview with The Guardian, Jolie is asked to recall the first time she felt “sufficiently disrespected in Hollywood” that she told someone to “f**k off” in response.
“Erm… well, no surprise, Harvey Weinstein. I worked with him when I was young,” said Jolie, who was just 21 when she starred in the Weinstein-produced “Playing By Heart”.
“If you get yourself out of the room, you think he attempted but didn’t, right? The truth is that the attempt and the experience of the attempt is an assault,” she recalled, describing his sexual overture as “beyond a pass, it was something I had to escape. I stayed away and warned people about him. I remember telling Jonny [Lee Miller], my first husband, who was great about it, to spread the word to other guys — don’t let girls go alone with him,” she said.
Later in her career, she turned down a big movie simply because Weinstein was producing it. “I was asked to do ‘The Aviator,’ but I said no because he was involved. I never associated or worked with him again,” she said. “It was hard for me when Brad did.”
Jolie is referring to Pitt’s role in the Weinstein-produced “Inglourious Basterds”, directed by Quentin Tarantino, which she admitted was a bone of contention between them that grew even deeper when, a few years later, Pitt approached Weinstein about producing his 2012 film “Killing Them Softly”.
When the Weinstein Company ultimately ended up producing the film, Jolie made it a point not to accompany Pitt to any promotional events for the movie.
“We fought about it,” Jolie admitted. “Of course it hurt.”
Jolie also addressed her decision to file for divorce, something she said she thought about long and hard before pulling the trigger.
“I’m not the kind of person who makes decisions like the decisions I had to make lightly,” she explained. “It took a lot for me to be in a position where I felt I had to separate from the father of my children.”
