Amyra Dastur Quotes

It's not lost on me that every single person who told their story about Harvey Weinstein talked about how they were silenced, how they were encouraged not to speak up, how they were embarrassed or ashamed to speak up.

There is casting couch in the Malayalam industry.

I was part of a growing community of women who were secretly dealing with harassment by Harvey Weinstein. But I also did not know that there was a world in which anybody would care about my experience with him.

When bosses, leaders, and powerful men and women ignore or deny the accounts of harassment victims, they reinforce the idea that harassers are playing the game as they should and that the rest of us should fall in line.

I can honestly, and proudly, say that I never was on the casting couch. Oh, of course there have been advances from certain men in the movie industry, but nothing overwhelming.

I can't even begin to tell you how many casting couches I was attacked on. Not just by casting people, but by stars.

Women need to be able to speak out if they are uncomfortable or something happened in the past that they were not comfortable with.

I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.

I wasn't naive, but at the end of my Miss America year, when two different executives attacked me during what I thought were informational interviews about jobs, I was shocked. I didn't see it coming, and the worst thing about it was the shame I felt, as if I'd done something wrong.

Whether it's Hollywood or Bollywood, sexual harassment is a reality. I've experienced it first-hand, and I know many of my counterparts have as well.

For me, talking about the casting couch in the Malayalam film industry was like calling the sky blue. There is nothing new about calling a spade a spade. My intention was not to create an effect; I just wanted to pluck a few weeds in the system and throw them out.

It is difficult to have the guts to speak up about any kind of sexual assault.

I've heard many women say that they were afraid to come out or they were too ashamed to talk about it because they thought it was something they had done to promote the man to sexually harass them - and that is not the case.

I still ask myself the same questions every woman asks. Was it my fault? Did I say or do something to make him feel like such an advance was welcome? And like most women, I never told anyone. Instead, I just quit.

It might sound cowardly, but I do agree that if you speak out about the casting couch, it will end your career.

I don't know how much of the 'casting couch' exists in the industry, as I've not seen it myself. I'm glad that I've not had to.

Just because of the #MeToo movement in Hollywood, after Oscar-winning actresses including Angelina Jolie came out and spoke against Harvey Weinstein, we also want to talk about something that has been happening in Bollywood for long; like several years ago, Mamta Kulkarni had spoken against filmmaker Rajkumar Santoshi.

I've been propositioned by men who were in a position to cast me. I lost a few roles because I didn't give in.

Being the object of Alfred Hitchcock's obsession was horrific, but while he ruined my career, he could never ruin my life.

Some of the things I've seen a lot of my female-actress friends who are relatively famous receive - I've seen some hideous things. Like some really, really bad things... like, the FBI should be contacted immediately.

Men, all men, were always trying to get hold of me, you know.

I don't know Bill Clinton as someone who needs to literally sexually harass a woman. I'm sure that he could have found many willing participants.

I would like to say that what Mel Phillips was doing was not sexual harassment but more sexual abuse of children, because he was doing it in a sexual manner now that I look back on it.

[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process on intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.

Rape has been normalized. Rape is in our culture. Gender based violence is part of our whole patriarchal culture. It happens all the time…. There is silence because of fear, because the perpetrator has the power one way or the other/