New Delhi: Emmy-winning actress Laura Dern has revealed that she was sexually harassed when she was a teenager.
While appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, the ‘Big Little Lies’ star shared that she was reminded by her mother, Diane Ladd, that she was allegedly assaulted when she was only 14-years-old.
The 50-year-old actress shared, “A very interesting thing happened this morning. I woke up and I realised that in that space I talked about how I was one of the lucky ones because I was raised by actors who told me their stories and told me what to look out for, and I realised that I was I still justifying behaviour.”
Adding, “And it was my mom who said, ‘No, no, no, Laura – that was sexual assault. That was harassment. That was assault. You were 14 then.”
Dern explained that until then, she hadn’t thought of those experiences as harassment or assault.
“You realize how in our culture we have justified, and therefore even condoned behaviour, as though it’s the norm,” Dern noted.
While she did not go into detail about her personal history with abuse, she commended her peers for speaking out at the ELLE event.
Laura thinks it is ”extraordinary” that a ”tribe of women”, including Cara Delevingne, Reese Witherspoon and Lena Headey, have recently started speaking out about their traumatic experiences in the entertainment business.
This news comes in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations made against Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexually assaulting a number of women over a 30 year period.
—ANI