Ellen Page is the latest actress to add her voice to the chorus of sexual harassment allegations against Brett Ratner, who directed Page in X-Men: The Last Standwhen she was 18.
Page detailed her experience with Ratner -- including alleged homophobic and sexist comments on set -- in a powerful Facebook post Friday.
“You should fuck her to make her realize she’s gay.” He said this about me during a cast and crew “meet and greet” before we began filming, X Men: The Last Stand. I was eighteen years old. He looked at a woman standing next to me, ten years my senior, pointed to me and said: “You should fuck her to make her realize she’s gay.” He was the film’s director, Brett Ratner.
I was a young adult who had not yet come out to myself. I knew I was gay, but did not know, so to speak. I felt violated when this happened. I looked down at my feet, didn’t say a word and watched as no one else did either. This man, who had cast me in the film, started our months of filming at a work event with this horrific, unchallenged plea. He “outed” me with no regard for my well-being, an act we all recognize as homophobic. I proceeded to watch him on set say degrading things to women.
Ratner has denied all allegations.
Page'sX-Menco-star, Anna Paquin, corroborated Page's account on Twitter.
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In the Facebook post, Page also detailed her feelings of powerlessness after Ratner allegedly tried to pressure her into a wearing a "Team Ratner" shirt on set, writing that after publicly refusing him, she was later reprimanded by the film's producers for talking back to the director -- "yet he was not being punished nor fired for the blatantly homophobic and abusive behavior we all witnessed. I was an actor that no one knew. I was eighteen and had no tools to know how to handle the situation."
SEE ALSO: Selma Blair, Rachel McAdams open up about their own horrifying sexual harassment experiencesPage also revealed years of previous harassment at the hands of other men in the industry, including three separate incidents when she was 16, two involving other directors and a third by a crew member.
When I was sixteen a director took me to dinner (a professional obligation and a very common one). He fondled my leg under the table and said, “You have to make the move, I can’t.” I did not make the move and I was fortunate to get away from that situation. It was a painful realization: my safety was not guaranteed at work. An adult authority figure for whom I worked intended to exploit me, physically. I was sexually assaulted by a grip months later. I was asked by a director to sleep with a man in his late twenties and to tell them about it. I did not. This is just what happened during my sixteenth year, a teenager in the entertainment industry.
On Nov. 1, six women accused Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct in a Los Angeles Timesreport -- Olivia Munn, Natasha Henstridge, Jaime Ray Newman, Katharine Towne, Eri Sasaki, and Jorina King. The following day, it emerged that Melanie Kohler, a former employee of talent agency Endeavor, had alleged that Ratner raped her 12 years ago in a Facebook post written a week prior to the LATstory, and that Ratner had filed a defamation suit against Kohler in response.
On Thursday, Varietyreported that Ratner and Russell Simmons were investigated for alleged sexual battery in 2001 by an unidentified woman, but that "prosecutors declined to press charges in the case, citing insufficient evidence."
Read Page's post in its entirety below.
