George Clooney has said it is important something positive comes out of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and revealed his wife Amal has faced sexual harassment at work.
The Hollywood star, who has been married to the top human rights lawyer since 2014, said he is hopeful something will change after the allegations of harassment and abuse against the producer.
He told US entertainment news show Entertainment Tonight: “Moving forward, we have to make sure that now there has to be something good that’s gonna come out of all of this.
“And the thing that’s good that could come out of this is that women feel safer in talking about these situations, and in doing so, that it makes it much harder for men who would behave like this to do it, [knowing] that they’ll get outed… they could lose their job or even go to jail if it goes that far.
“I think it’s important that that’s got to be the step forward from this. There has to be something good that comes out of it.”
The Ocean’s Eleven star said Weinstein has previously alluded to him that he had relationships with women who were not his wife.
He said: “Harvey would talk about women that he’d, you know, gone out with. I didn’t really necessarily believe that ‘cause to believe that would be to believe bad things about actresses that I know and like, and I didn’t really buy into that.
“But I will say that somebody knew and if there was a reporter that sat on a story for years and didn’t write it, I want to know why because I would have liked to have known these stories.
“And if there was a newspaper or a website that had this information that investigated it, I’d like to see how much ad money they got from Miramax or from The Weinstein Company.”
He said: “I want to know who took women up to a hotel room and then left them there for Harvey. I want to know who did that. Harvey’s gonna get his and deserves it. But there’s other people involved in this and the whole culture of this is going have to stop.”
Clooney added the issue is not just a problem in Hollywood, saying it exists in politics and in his wife’s profession.
He said: “My wife, who is a human rights lawyer, says she’s faced those exact kinds of situations in law.
“It’s everywhere and so it needs to be addressed as if it’s a problem for all of us. And we have to take it on full force because the kind of assault that we’re talking about now is – it’s so infuriating that this was allowed to go on as long as it did.”
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