Kate Hudson has thanked her mother Goldie Hawn for teaching her to stand up for herself in Hollywood.
The movie business in the US was rocked in 2017 when numerous actresses, including Rose McGowan, Cara Delevingne and Angelina Jolie, and female employees of The Weinstein Company publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment or assault.
Those allegations were followed by numerous men coming forward with claims of sexual misconduct by Kevin Spacey
Kate, 38, insists that this sort of inappropriate behavior was known in Hollywood but she feels fortunate that her mother Goldie, 72, had years of experience in the business and was able to warn her about the pitfalls of the movie industry and tell her to not tolerate any unfair treatment.
In an interview with The Times newspaper, the ‘Fool’s Gold’ star said: "She (Goldie) was a trailblazer in terms of women in film and she raised me to speak my mind. What’s being talked about now is something we’ve always known about and always talked about; it’s just not always been publicly out there, front and center. I’ve known of [such behavior] the whole time, but I was raised to speak my mind if something is unfair."
Kate insists the biggest change to come from the revelations and the following Time’s Up and #MeToo movements is that women in the entertainment business will have more power to refuse to do things they don’t feel comfortable about without being criticized or labeled.
She said: "What’s different is how it was taken by other parties – we all know the age old story, if you put a woman in the position of saying no she doesn’t want to do something, or wants something to be handled differently, there’s a lot of eye-rolling and talk about how she’s complicated and difficult to work with, and then you put a man in the same position and it’s expected of him, nobody bats an eye."
Goldie – who is in a long-term relationship with Kurt Russell – previously admitted she had many "horrible" experiences of harassment when she was starting out on her career as a young dancer in New York City, but she always had the confidence to stick up for herself due to her upbringing.
Goldie shared: "Sexual harassment, unfortunately, has been there forever. I had some horrible experiences as a young dancer in New York City. I’ll top all of them.
"I had a very strong mom, a very strong dad and I had a lot of resilience and I really knew who I was … A lot of girls don’t know what to do."