How far can you go to fulfill your dream? There is so much competition in Hollywood that some struggling actors can do anything to get a break. ‘Casting Couch,’ which means the sexual favors for film roles between casting directors or film producers and aspiring actresses or actors. However, Hollywood has always denied this but some celebrities disagree. Here are 5 Actors who talk about their casting couch horror stories.
1) Marilyn Monroe
It sounds surprising that most famous, beautiful, and successful actress of Hollywood had casting-couch experience. Not only once but she had many casting-couch experiences. She did sexual favors for producers, directors and actors to get ahead in her career. According to her biography written by Barbara Leaming, “When Marilyn approached Howard Hawks one weekend in Palm Springs, the director made it clear that he saw nothing special about her. He thought she was stupid and told her so. He wasn’t even interested in a sexual encounter.” – Ouch! Although Marilyn Monroe admitted to sleeping with people to advance her career, she would later call Hollywood ‘an overcrowded brothel.’
2) Helen Mirren
In 2007, Helen Mirren spoke openly about her casting-couch experience in 1964, with director Michael Winner. Helen stated, “I was mortified and incredibly angry. I thought it was insulting and sexist, and I don’t think any actress should be treated like that-like a piece of meat-at all.” However, Michael Winner denied about the incident, “I don’t remember asking her to turn around, but if I did I wasn’t being serious. I was only doing what the [casting] agent asked me—and for this, I get reviled! Helen’s a lovely person, she’s a great actress and I’m a huge fan, but her memory of that moment is a little flawed.”
3) Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron experienced the casting couch when she was just 19-years-old. In 2009, during an interview with OK! magazine, she opened up saying “I thought it was a little odd that the audition was on a Saturday night at his house in Los Angeles, but I thought maybe that was normal. He was in his Hugh Hefner pajamas—I go inside and he’s offering me a drink, and I’m thinking, ‘My God this acting stuff is very relaxed.’ But it soon becomes very clear what the situation was. I was like, ‘Not going to happen! Got the wrong girl, buddy!’”
4) Megan Fox
It is quite shocking that Megan Fox had experienced casting-couch after she became famous. In an interview with British GQ in 2009, Fox told, “Any casting-couch shit I’ve experienced has been since I’ve become famous. It’s really so heartbreaking. Some of these people! Like Hollywood legends. You think you’re going to meet them and you’re so excited, like, ‘I can’t believe this person wants to have a conversation with me,’ and you get there and you realize that’s not what they want, at all. It’s happened a lot this year actually.”
5) Ryan Phillippe
Till now many of us believe that casting-couch victims are only females, but you are completely wrong. Many male actors have experienced it but very few of them openly admitted it. In April 2010, Ryan Phillippe talked about it on a radio talk show. Ryan said when he was 19-years-old that he had to flee a “creepy” casting couch session.
