Evan Rachel Wood has revealed she has been sexually assaulted twice.
The 29-year-old actress states she was once raped by a significant other and a bar owner on separate occasions.
In an email to Rolling Stone magazine the day after the US Presidential election, she wrote: ‘I’ve been raped. By a significant other while we were together. And on a separate occasion, by the owner of a bar … I don’t believe we live in a time where people can stay silent any longer. Not given the state our world is in with its blatant bigotry and sexism.’
The email admission was separate to her interview with the publication in which she admitted she had suffered ‘physical, psychological, sexual’ abuse.
She goes on to explain that she believes her vulnerability was connected to her bisexuality.
Evan realised she was attracted to women when she was age four or five and came out publicly in 2011. She now refers to herself as ‘gender fluid’.
The Westworld star believes she was ‘taken advantage of’ because there was something about her people knew they could ‘exploit’.
She adds in the email: ‘It was always talked about like a phase or something stupid, or something you were doing for attention.
‘You know, bisexuality is worthy of eye rolls. And I didn’t realise how damaging that was until I tried to have healthy relationships as an adult and realized that there was still all this shame and conditioning and stigma around my sexuality that was really affecting the way I related to people.’
Evan – who has a three-year-old son with her ex-husband Jamie Bell, and previously dated rocker Marilyn Manson for four years – attempted to take her own life at 22 and has since admitted it was the ‘best/worst’ thing that has ever happened to her.
In the interview, she also discloses that she was called a ‘whore’ in the street because of her romance with shock rocker, famous for his androgynous stage character.
He was married to burlesque icon Dita Von Teese when he met Wood aged 18 in LA.
She and co-star Thandie Newton have recently spoken out to defend shocking rape scenes in Westworld, a reworking of the 1973 movie of the same name that starred Yul Brynner.
It’s set in a futuristic park where humans pay to be able to act out their darkest fantasies with humanoid robots, called ‘hosts’, available to fulfill their requests.
‘We get to see the consequence and ramifications of this violence – the cost of this violence,’ Newton said during a round table discussion in Silicon Valley last month.
