“It’s hell,” said actress Anna Mouglalis. Faced with the commission of inquiry into sexual violence at the National Assembly, the actress spoke on Monday, December 16, to denounce the numerous attacks she suffered in the world of cinema. With a hoarse and determined voice, the actress recounted, for several minutes, the unacceptable behavior she was confronted with throughout her career.
From harassment from the casting phase
From the beginning of her career, she experienced a lot of violence. “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,” explained the actress. actress. For Anna Mouglalis, these attacks often begin during the casting phase, crucial moments for young actresses, who hesitate to refuse sometimes inappropriate requests for fear of compromising their career.
She insisted on the pressure exerted on actresses in the context of certain roles, where the objective often seems to seduce an all-powerful director at all costs. “It turns out that you generally get the role when the director is attracted to it. But no, we didn’t come to seduce him, we came to play. So there is a big problem,” she says, emphasizing the confusion that these situations can cause.
A first shoot and a meeting with Gérard Miller…
Anna Mouglalis entered the world of cinema in 1997, at the age of 20, for the film “Terminal” by Francis Girod. Before filming began, the production encouraged her to meet one of the screenwriters, Gérard Miller. The actress then recounted how she escaped a possible attack by refusing the famous psychoanalyst a hypnosis session.
However, she later learned that other young actresses in the film had accepted these sessions. Some of them recounted that they had been victims of sexual violence. This experience marked her and pushed her to testify publicly to denounce this abuse.
In the exclusive investigation by ELLE magazine, his testimony on the psychoanalyst Gérard Miller, who is the subject of accusations of sexual violence, was collected.
Our exclusive investigations into the Gérard Miller affair:
“Crazy” requests during promotion periods
Alongside the actress Nina Meurisse, the one who played President Amélie Dorendeu in the series “Baron Noir” on Canal+ continues her story on the excesses of the industry, this time by addressing “post-filming”. She talks in particular about the film promotion period, in which actors and actresses are often contractually obliged to participate. These moments can sometimes lead to “also quite crazy” situations, according to the actress.
In her story, she notably remembers the promotion of the film “Merci pour le chocolat” by Claude Chabrol, released in theaters in 2000. She recounts how the production had asked her to participate in the chocolate show, wearing a dress in chocolate. The concept then consisted of visitors being able to use it directly on her, to the point of stripping her completely. A proposal that she firmly rejected, although other young actresses could have complied for fear of reprisals.
Interrupted by the dissolution of the government before the summer, the work of the commission of inquiry into sexist and sexual violence in the world of culture resumed at the beginning of November. Today chaired by the environmentalist deputy Sandrine Rousseau, this commission must continue until April 2025 and should result in a bill.
