Zoe Wanamaker joked she was ‘p****d off’ no one ‘tried it on’ with her when she was a young actress in the 1970s.
The actress, 68, said sexual harassment was widespread at the BBC and ITV when she started out in television.
But even though the My Family star claimed sex pests can be found in every industry, she branded the Me Too movement a ‘witch hunt’.
Zoe Wanamaker joked she was ‘p****d off’ no one ‘tried it on’ with her when she was a young actress in the 1970s
‘I’ve got a girlfriend who was a script editor and she was constantly being touched up,’ she told the Daily Mirror.
‘I was just p****d off that nobody ever tried it on with me.’
Miss Wanamaker added: ‘This is in every business. I don’t think it’s just showbusiness.
‘But now I’m upset because it’s a witch-hunt – you can gain something out of it by just, after 50 years, coming out and saying, “Oh, I was raped”. You think, “What took you so long?”’
The actress, said the movement could be likened to the McCarthy witch hunts, when writers and actors in the US in the 1950s were blacklisted if they had any Soviet links.
Miss Wanamaker started acting in the mid-1970s and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company until 1984.
The actress (pictured, in Sky Atlantic series Britannia), 68, said sexual harassment was widespread at the BBC and ITV when she started out in television
The actress became a household name when she starred in My Family and won a legion of younger fans when she played Madame Hooch in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Her comments come after Brigitte Bardot criticised ‘hypocritical’ actresses for flirting with movie producers.
The veteran French actress said that she had never been a victim of sexual harassment but rather found compliments about her appearance ‘nice’.
When asked what she thought of actresses denouncing harassment in the film industry, the 83-year-old said: ‘In the vast majority of cases they are being hypocritical, ridiculous, uninteresting.
Wanamaker (left, alongside Robert Lindsay in My Family and right, claimed sex pests can be found in every industry, she branded the Me Too movement a ‘witch hunt’
‘There are many actresses who flirt with producers in order to get a role.
‘Then, in order to be talked about, they will say they have been harassed.
‘In reality, rather than benefiting them, it harms them.’
Miss Bardot, a sex symbol of the Sixties, said she enjoyed the attention she got when she was younger and working in the film business.
The actress told French magazine Paris Match: ‘Me, I was never the victim of sexual harassment and I found it charming when I was told that I was beautiful or I had a nice little backside.
‘This kind of compliment is nice.’