Samantha Morton claims disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein tried to destroy her career…

Actress Samantha Morton has claimed Harvey Weinstein tried to destroy her career when she was in her early twenties

The actress, 46, accused the disgraced producer – who is currently in jail after being found guilty of sex crimes – of threatening to make sure she would ‘not work again’ after she turned down an approach to be in his 2000 romantic comedy About Adam, which starred Kate Hudson, Stuart Townsend and Frances O’Connor.

She recalled on The Louis Theroux Podcast: ‘I said, “I don’t like it. I think the film is really misogynistic and I don’t want to be part of it”.’

The Minority Report actress said the casting director then told her: ‘You don’t say no to Harvey.’

But Samantha stressed she wasn’t rejecting the producer, just the film – and was issued with a chilling warning when she refused to change her stance.

She said: ‘I [then] had a phone call saying, “You can’t say no.” The “no” wasn’t being listened to. So they kept coming back with this role and I was told unequivocally, ‘You’re not going to work again unless you do this role. I’m going to make your life hell. You will not work again’ – Weinstein pictured in October 2022 

She said: ‘I had just worked with Stuart Townsend on Under The Skin. It was just not interesting to me. I was uber-polite.

‘I [then] had a phone call saying, “You can’t say no.” The “no” wasn’t being listened to. So they kept coming back with this role and I was told unequivocally, 

‘You’re not going to work again unless you do this role. I’m going to make your life hell. You will not work again.’

The Whale actress refused to give in and admitted she felt her decision cost her roles on some of Weinstein’s later films, including being passed in favour of Lena Headey for a role in 2005’s The Brothers Grimm opposite Matt Damon and Heath Ledger after the producer deemed her ‘unf****able’.

Samantha said: ‘It made me question why he was anti-me?’

She then remembered the About Adam warning.

She added: ‘I forgot about it because it was years earlier. And then all these years later, I realised that [when] I get an offer, get a letter from a director, if Miramax or then the Weinstein Company had anything to do with it, it was just awful for me.

‘He had a reason, a deep-seated reason, to just try and destroy my career… He categorically couldn’t, because I kept working, doing independent cinema all over the world.’

No offence: Samantha had stressed she wasn’t rejecting the producer, just the film – and was issued with a chilling warning when she refused to change her stance – (pictured in December 2022) 

Throughout her early childhood, Samantha grew up in various children’s homes. At 13 years old, during her stay at one of her homes, she was abused by her care workers who she trusted and the police did nothing about her case.

In her view the care system for young people is still ‘completely broken’, ‘beyond repair’ and ‘has to be completely re-thought from the ground up’.

Because of her experience, she confesses that she ‘always felt like an outsider, being and growing up in care, being a child of the state’.

She says she loved living in New York because she felt as though everyone was accepted there, a feeling that she never experienced in the UK as a child.

Going on to discuss her love of America, Samantha admits how she also preferred working in the US and how the sets always felt ‘more comfortable’. 

She comments that, as a young woman on film sets in the UK, she was often asked to do things that ‘wouldn’t happen now’ and got a reputation for being ‘tricky’. 

She states ‘I didn’t have the skillset to articulate when I was uncomfortable or when something didn’t feel right’. She said that she ‘never had these problems in America’.

Meanwhile, disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was given a  16-year prison sentence in February.

Shamed: Weinstein was once a powerful media mogul before scores of women came forward to accuse him of rape and sexual assault in 2017

The once powerful media mogul, 70, was found guilty of rape and two other counts of sexual assault at a trial in Los Angeles in December after previously being sentenced in 2020 for sex crimes in New York City. 

He said: ‘It is incredible to be convicted for a crime I wasn’t even present for. I am innocent. I never raped or assaulted anyone.

Weinstein, who continues to maintain his innocence, added that the actress he was convicted of raping, ‘perjured herself at least three times and then sued for money, when she said on the stand that she would “never.'” ‘I was never with her. Her entire claim thing was a setup for a money grab,’ he added.

Weinstein was already serving a 23-year sentence for separate rape and sexual assault convictions in New York when he was found guilty of rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by foreign object of an unnamed Russian-born Italian model.

His latest sentence – which will only begin when he completes his New York sentence – came after a rape at the Mr C Beverly Hills Hotel in February 2013.

As the judge revealed his fate on Thursday, Weinstein – who is now almost certain to die behind bars – moaned: ‘I maintain that I’m innocent.

‘I never raped or sexually assaulted Jane Doe 1. I never knew this woman, and the fact is she doesn’t know me.’

‘Please don’t sentence me to life in prison,’ he begged Judge Lisa B Lench, to no avail. ‘I don’t deserve it. There are so many things wrong with this case.’

He will now serve the 16 years in addition to the 21 years left in his New York sentence. That would mean that Weinstein would be extradited to California to serve his 16 years behind bars in the state at the age of 91 – if he’s still alive at that age.

Should Weinstein make it to the end of his California sentence, he’d be released aged 107.

But he still claims he is innocent, and his lawyers tried to argue in court on Thursday that Weinstein was the victim of an unfair trial.

And his spokesman says the sentence is ‘cruel’ given Weinstein’s age and failing health conditions, vowing that his conviction will be overturned.