United States
-In her book You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again (1991), Oscar-winning producer Julia Phillips attempted to expose many of the underground Hollywood institutions and confirmed that a "casting couch" mentality was alive and well in Hollywood.
-In a 1995 article, journalist Peter Keough described Hollywood as "a town where everyone is selling body and soul for fame and fortune and all – especially women – are considered commodities".[2]
-In a 1996 interview, actor Woody Harrelson declared "every [acting] business I ever entered into in New York seemed to have a casting couch ... I've seen so many people sleep with people they loathe in order to further their ambition."[3]
-In 2003, Italian actress Asia Argento stated that Hollywood producers expect oral sex from young starlets in exchange for roles.[4] Her semi-autobiographical film Scarlet Diva (2000) features a scene along these lines with painter Joe Coleman playing a lecherous producer.
-At a 2005 class reunion, producer Chris Hanley told his former classmates that "almost every leading actress in all of [his] 24 films has slept with a director or producer or a leading actor to get the part that launched her career".[5]
-In 2009, Megan Fox stated that leading film directors made sexual propositions while casting for film roles.[6]
-In a 2009 interview with OK! Magazine, actress Charlize Theron claimed that when she was 18 she was propositioned at an audition by a pajama-clad Hollywood director.[7] “I thought it was a little odd that the audition was on a Saturday night at his house in Los Angeles, but I thought maybe that was normal.”[8]
-In a 2009 interview, actor Mickey Rourke declared: "There's definitely something called a casting couch... if you take a girl from the Midwest with a pretty face and instead of inviting them in for an audition in the morning, the directors invite them for dinner at night? ... I can recall with certain women, we'd go out, I'd park the car on Sunset and by the time I'd got to the curb there'd be three or four producers handing them cards... There's ways you get a job and ways you get a job."[9]
-In a 2010 interview with Elle magazine, Gwyneth Paltrow revealed that early in her career a film executive suggested that a business meeting should finish "in the bedroom".[10]
-In April 2010, actor Ryan Phillippe admitted on the Howard Stern Show that he had had to flee a “creepy” casting-couch session when he was 18 or 19.[11]
-In a 2010 interview with Access Hollywood, actress Lisa Rinna said a producer had asked her for "a quickie" when she was a 24-year old candidate for a role on a prominent television series.[12] At the same interview, Rinna's husband Harry Hamlin claimed that a female casting director attempted to seduce him in the late 1970s when he was 27.[13][14]
-In the November 2012 issue of Elle magazine, Susan Sarandon spoke of a "really disgusting" casting-couch experience in New York in the late 1960s or early 1970s. “I just went into a room and a guy practically threw me on the desk. It was my early days in New York and it was really disgusting. It wasn’t like I gave it a second thought. It was so badly done.”[15][16]
-Theresa Russell has alleged in multiple interviews that she was propositioned by legendary producer Sam Spiegel during her first casting session for The Last Tycoon. [17]