While the dissolution of the government, before the summer, had interrupted the work of the commission of inquiry into sexist and sexual violence in the world of culture, it resumed last November.
And this Monday, December 16, it was the turn of actress Anna Mouglalis to speak. The actress spoke at length about the attacks and pressures she suffered throughout her career.
From casting violence to promoting the film
“As an actress, when I was 19, I had a 50-year-old actor who, for a casting, buried his head in my lower abdomen while holding me by the hips.” she said in particular, before pointing out that very often, it was during castings that actresses were subjected to violence.
Then to denounce the dynamics at work between the actresses and the directors: “It turns out that you generally get the role when the director is attracted. But no, we didn’t come to seduce him, we came to play. So there is a big problem there.“
The actress also castigated the “quite crazy” demands that could have been made during the promotion of the films. She notably recalled an example in 2000, for the promotion of Merci pour le chocolat, by Claude Chabrol: it was necessary “to be dressed in a chocolate dress in a chocolate salon, and visitors to the salon would be able to use me until they stripped me naked“. She will refuse.
A meeting with Gérard Miller in his apartment
She also remembers her meeting with the psychoanalyst Gérard Miller, who is today the subject of accusations of sexual violence. The actress, then aged 19, was pushed by the production to meet the man at his home, because he was one of the screenwriters for the film Terminale, by Francis Girod, which she was preparing to shoot. This is his first feature film.
“It’s normal to have confidence, when you are sent by production to a screenwriter, that you want to act in a film. This should all be very normal“, explains the actress.
She then says that the psychoanalyst offered her a hypnosis session, which she refused, among other things because she “find the guy really not likeable“.
This will result in a change in behavior on the part of the person concerned. “He starts to tense up and become a little aggressive. And to say to myself ‘well then what are we going to do and what should we do in this scenario?’. I tell him that we don’t have to do anything at all, given how it’s gone, there’s no point. (…) He tells me that he will therefore remove my character’s lines to give them to other actresses. I tell him so much the better.”
The actress leaves her home. “At the time, I didn’t talk to the director or the producer about it, I should have. But like actually, I left, I was like ‘actually, he’s just an asshole‘”.
The commission of inquiry into gender-based and sexual violence is chaired by environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau and must continue until May 2025 to then result in a bill.
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