Best Actress winner Kate Winslet poses with her trophy for The Reader in 2009 (Picture: MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Kate Winslet has declared she deliberately did not thank Harvey Weinstein in her winning speech for the best actress Oscar as she knew he wasn’t ‘well behaved’.

The 42-year-old actress was told to make sure she thanked the movie producer if she won the Best Actress gong for The Reader in 2009 – but she refused, thanking 19 other people by name instead.

Despite The Weinstein Company financing and distributed the film, Kate says she’s glad she stood her ground, telling the Los Angeles Times: ‘That was deliberate. That was absolutely deliberate.


‘I remember being told, “Make sure you thank Harvey if you win”. And I remember turning around and saying, “No I won’t. No I won’t”.



‘And it was nothing to do with not being grateful. If people aren’t well-behaved, why would I thank him?

‘The fact that I’m never going to have to deal with Harvey Weinstein again as long as I live is one of the best things that’s ever happened and I’m sure the feeling is universal.’

Kate during her 2009 Oscars speech (Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Kate played Hanna Schmitz, a woman hiding her past as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp, in The Reader.

Winslet also said the producer never let her forget the fact that she made her first movie, Heavenly Creatures, for his company Miramax Films.

Kate Winslet in The Reader (Picture: Weinstein Company The/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)

She added to the US newspaper: ‘For my whole career, Harvey Weinstein, whenever I’ve bumped into him, he’d grab my arm and say, ‘Don’t forget who gave you your first movie’. Like I owe him everything.

‘Then later, with The Reader, same thing, “I’m gonna get you that Oscar nomination, I’m gonna get you a win, I’m gonna win for you”.

‘But that’s how he operated. He was bullying and nasty. Going on a business level, he was always very, very hard to deal with – he was rude.’

Winslet, who has already spoken out to condemn the sexual assault and harassment he is accused of, said: ‘This kind of treatment in any workplace is utterly unacceptable.

‘And hopefully what will happen is that more women will feel compelled to come forward – these women are victims of crime by a man who was always impossible to deal with.

‘I hope that Harvey Weinstein absolutely is punished within the fullest extent of the law should that be the case.’

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