Did Hollywood Cover for Harvey Weinstein?

After allegations of decades of sexual abuse by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein surfaced - and after Weinstein was fired from his own company over the allegations - Hollywood is reacting. Actresses who have worked with Weinstein, including Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence, are condemning him while claiming that they had no idea that the alleged behavior was going on.

More and more indications are coming to light, however, that suggest that Weinstein's behavior was far from a secret in Hollywood. Some sources have accused Russell Crowe and Matt Damon of helping to kill an expose years ago that would have uncovered the story. Actress Ashley Judd, who alleges that Weinstein harassed her, says that women in Hollywood were talking about the behavior for years. And now Jessica Chastain, who worked with Weinstein on several films, says she was warned about the producer's predatory ways "from the beginning."

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

Jessica Chastain has been engaged in the Harvey Weinstein story on Twitter since the dam first broke last week when The New York Times published a bombshell report detailing his decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct and harassment.

She has retweeted Weinstein-related coverage from the Times and Vulture and posted messages of solidarity with Mark Ruffalo and Chelsea Handler. ("You are a wonderful human," Chastain wrote about Ruffalo after his tweet that Weinstein's story displayed a "disgusting abuse of power.") "This is heart shattering," she wrote when retweeting a Vulture report about how Russell Crowe and her The Martian co-star Matt Damon allegedly helped bury a planned exposé in the Times more than a decade ago.

Then, on Monday afternoon, Chastain posted a three-sentence revelation which added more context to why she had been following the story so closely, and echoed a statement being spread by several A-listers following Weinstein's ouster from his own company: The signs were out there. "I was warned from the beginning," tweeted the Oscar nominee to her nearly 600,000 followers. "The stories were everywhere. To deny that is to create an environment for it to happen again."

The actress has known Weinstein for more than a handful of years after starring in several films produced or distributed by The Weinstein Co. Among them are the John Hillcoat-directed crime drama Lawless opposite Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf and Guy Pearce from 2012, and the Ned Benson-directed The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby trilogy opposite James McAvoy, released in 2013 and 2014.

"I'm sick of the media demanding only women speak up. What about the men? Perhaps many are afraid to look at their own behavior," Chastain also wrote on Twitter.

She's got a point. While many of Hollywood's highest-profile male stars have remained silent thus far, the same can't be said of its leading ladies. Chastain's admission arrives on a day that has seen other A-list actresses come out with their own statements, even if they claimed not to know of Weinstein's history. Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, Lena Dunham and Glenn Close have all delivered their take on what is becoming the most important story to hit Hollywood in years for how it has pulled back a veil, uncovering a culture of enabling and abuse of power at the hands of one of the most successful yet most feared film executives.

Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.

Do you believe the actors and actresses who say they were shocked to learn of Weinstein's behavior? Sound off in the comment section below.