Actress Julia Ormond sues Harvey Weinstein, Disney claiming sexual assault

MANHATTAN (CN) — English actress Julia Ormond says disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court.

Ormond, who also names Walt Disney, Creative Artists Agency and Miramax as defendants in the suit, joins a long list of women who claim Weinstein abused his power in the film and TV industry to sexually abuse his victims.

The 71-year-old Weinstein has become the poster child of the #MeToo movement ever since his victims started coming forward in recent years. Ormond referenced the movement directly in Wednesday’s lawsuit.

“The #MeToo movement has unequivocally demonstrated the horrors experienced by so many women who aspired to become Hollywood stars,” the suit says. “This case demonstrates, however, that even those who have reached the highest level of the film industry are not immune.”

Ormond, 58, has appeared in shows such as “Mad Men,” “Witches of East End”** and “The Walking Dead: World Beyond.” She won an Emmy Award in 2010 for her starring role in TV historical drama film “Temple Grandin.” Despite her success, Ormond claims that even she “became yet another victim of Harvey Weinstein’s depravity.”

In the lawsuit, Ormond details her time as an up-and-coming actress in the mid 1990s, getting representation from Creative Artists Agency and signing a film production deal with the studio Miramax, then owned by Disney.

“What Ormond did not know is that Miramax’s co-chairman, Harvey Weinstein, was a sexual predator who systematically targeted the women actors he encountered, whether they were trying to break into the film business or, like Ormond, had already enjoyed great success,” Ormond says in the complaint.

Ormond claims that in December 1995, she and Weinstein met for dinner to discuss one of her ideas for a project. But Weinstein refused to talk business, eventually telling Ormond that he would only discuss her project with her back at Ormond’s Miramax-provided apartment. Ormond agreed after several drinks.

“Soon after, Weinstein stripped naked and forced her to perform oral sex on him,” Ormond claims in the suit.

Ormond says the men at Creative Artists Agency who represented her knew about Weinstein’s reputation and rumored behavior, but did nothing to protect her from him despite their “legal duties” to “look out for her well-being.” She claims the same about Weinstein’s employers at Miramax and Disney.

“Brazenly, none of these prominent companies warned Ormond that Weinstein had a history of assaulting women because he was too important, too powerful, and made them too much money,” Ormond says in the complaint.

When she told Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane, her agents at Creative Artists Agency, about the assault, Ormond said they told her that “she would not be believed” if she reported Weinstein to the police and that “he would seriously damage her career.”

“Still worse, not long after Weinstein’s assault on Ormond and her reporting of the assault to them, CAA lost interest in representing her, and her career suffered dramatically,” Ormond claims in the lawsuit. “CAA, Miramax, and Disney continued to handsomely profit from their close association with Harvey Weinstein for many years after Ormond was assaulted by him and then cast aside by Hollywood.”

As have the women who accused Weinstein of sexual assault, Ormond cites his “immense power, influence and resources” as the drivers of Weinstein’s “predatory” behavior and tendency to get away with his actions.

Ormond’s first cause of action is battery against Weinstein. But in a rare deviation from past sex abuse lawsuits filed against Weinstein, Ormond is also going after the corporate entities that helped cover up his behavior — Miramax and Disney on claims of negligent supervision and retention, and Creative Artists Agency on claims of negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.

The actress filed the lawsuit under the Adult Survivors Act, which allows sexual assault survivors to sue their abusers outside of any statute of limitations, regardless of when the abuse happened. She told Variety that she was inspired by the #MeToo movement to share her story now in hopes that it stops corporate silence against sexual abuse.

“I personally don’t believe that Harvey could have done this without enablers. And for me, that is the layer that you have to get down to, in terms of the root cause,” Ormond said.

“If there had been best practices and Harvey Weinstein had been called out at the start after his first sexual harassment or his first sexual assault, he could have learned different behaviors, and potentially all of the people that followed wouldn’t have been harmed. But he wasn’t. And there’s a reason for that,” she added.

Weinstein was found guilty of rape in New York in 2020 and again in Los Angeles in 2022. He’s currently serving a 23-year sentence in New York, and will have to serve an additional 16 years in Los Angeles after that sentence is complete.

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