French Actress Adèle Haenel Stops Acting in Protest Against Sexual Abuse in Film Industry

The French actress Adèle Haenel known from the film Portrait of the girl on fire, stops acting in protest against the exclusion of women who speak out about sexual abuses in the film world.

In a letter to the French cultural weekly Telerama, Haenel said she wanted to “denounce the general complacency in our industry towards sexual abusers”. She calls her career stop a political statement.

Haenel received several awards. She was nominated seven times for a César, of which she won two. The Césars are the most important film awards in France.

In 2019, Haenel accused French film director Christophe Ruggia of sexual assault. According to Haenel, this happened when she was working with him as a teenager. Haenel wrote in her letter that the film industry is failing to deal with sexual abusers in the industry.

When film director Roman Polanski, who was convicted of rape of a minor, won a César in 2020, she left the theater with a number of actresses in protest. The director was nominated for twelve awards that year. Polanski abused a 13-year-old girl in the United States in the late 1970s. He pleaded guilty, was detained for six weeks and then released on bail.

After the boycott of Polanski at the Césars in 2020, Haenel no longer appeared on the silver screen.