Marlee Matlin detailed the abuse she says she suffered at the hand of her former boyfriend William Hurt in her 2010 memoir, “I’ll Scream Later,” which recently resurfaced in a Daily Beast article.
Though the accusations seemed to be taken lightly by the media at the time, amid the many sexual harassment and assault allegations recently made in Hollywood, Matlin’s disturbing tale of her two-year relationship with the actor in the late ’80s takes on a new dimension.
In her book, Matlin said Hurt — her co-star from “Children of a Lesser God,” the film for which she won a Best Actress Academy Award — physically and emotional abused her.
In one particularly dark passage, Matlin described a night when Hurt raped her after coming home drunk around 4:30 a.m. while filming “Broadcast News.” The actress wrote that the Oscar-winner woke her up and “the next thing I knew he’d pulled me out of the bed, screaming at me, shaking me.”
“I was scared, I was sobbing,” she continued. “Then he threw me on the bed, started ripping off his clothes and mine. I was crying. ‘No, no, no. Please Bill, no.’ The next thing I remember is Bill ramming himself inside me as I sobbed.”
Matlin detailed other disturbing incidents in her book, saying Hurt verbally attacked her on the night she won her Oscar in 1987. Matlin wrote that Hurt asked her, “What makes you think you deserve it?” while they were sitting in a limo after she became the first deaf actress to ever win an Oscar. “There are hundreds of actors who have worked for years for the recognition you just got handed to you,” he continued. “Think about that.”
Hurt (who was nominated for Best Actor that year) was the one to present Matlin’s category that night and used sign language to communicate her name, then kissed her, when she won.
TheWrap reached out to a representative for Matlin for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.