Hollywood actors, Matt Damon and George Clooney say that they both
knew Harvey Weinstein was somewhat of a “womanizer,” but they were
unaware he was preying on women in Hollywood to the level that many
starlets have recently come forward to allege.
In a new interview on ABC News, Damon and Clooney said they were
outraged for their female counterparts after a growing number of women
in the industry accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and even rape in
some cases.
“When people say like, ‘Everybody knew,’ like, yeah, I knew I knew he
was an asshole. He was proud of that. But this level of criminal sexual
predation is not something that I ever thought was going on” Matt Damon
said.
He added that he “knew the story about Gwyneth” from Ben Affleck, his
close friend and Paltrow’s ex-boyfriend. “I never talked to Gwyneth
about it,” Damon said. “I knew that they had come to whatever, you know,
agreement or understanding that they had come to. She had handled it.”
Damon first worked with Weinstein on Good Will Hunting in
the late 1990s and said he knew Weinstein “was a womanizer” and a
“bully. What makes something like this so horrific is that these are
women and actresses who are pursuing their dreams,” Damon said. “And
they’re doing everything right. And suddenly they found themselves alone
with a predator.”
Clooney said he would have “done something” had he
known the extent of what was happening, though he didn’t specify what
kind of action he would have taken. “The idea that this predator, this
assaulter was out there silencing women like that, it’s beyond
infuriating,” he said.