Heather Kerr accuses Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct

Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Former actress Heather Kerr on Friday joined a group of women accusing producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct.

She made the allegations during a news conference with her lawyer, Gloria Allred. Kerr said Weinstein forced her to touch his genitals in order to promote her career in Hollywood.

"What he wanted to know was whether she could satisfy him sexually in order to obtain roles in their films," Allred said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "He told her that this was 'how things worked in Hollywood and that all actresses made it that way... by sleeping their way into the jobs that they had."

Earlier, director Quentin Tarantino said he was aware of allegations against Weinstein and wishes he did more to stop it.

"I knew enough to do more than I did," the director, who has worked with Weinstein throughout his career, told The New York Times in an article published Thursday.

"There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn't secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things," he continued.

Tarantino says he was aware of Weinstein's sexual advances towards actress Mira Sorvino in 1995, whom the filmmaker was dating at the time. "I was shocked an appalled," Tarantino said of Sorvino telling him Weinstein had chased her around a hotel room and showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night.

"I couldn't believe he would do that so openly. I was like: 'Really? Really?' But the thing I thought then, at the time, was that he was particularly hung up on Mira," Tarantino said before offering why he felt the problem was resolved by dating Sorvino. "I'm with her, he knows that, he won't mess with her, he knows that she's my girlfriend," he said.

Tarantino also shared how he was aware of another actress who told him Weinstein had approached her and how actress Rose McGowan had reached a settlement with the Hollywood mogul."I chalked it up to a '50s-'60s era image of a boss chasing a secretary around the desk," Tarantino said. "As if that's OK. That's the egg on my face right now."

Weinstein worked with Tarantino on nearly all of his films, including Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds and The Hateful Eight.

McGowan is among a number of women who have said Weinstein raped or harassed them since an initial New York Times report containing allegations Oct. 10. Other women have come forward, including Lupita Nyong'o, who shared her experiences with the 65-year-old Thursday in an op-ed written by the actress in The New York Times.

Nyong'o wrote that Weinstein made her feel uncomfortable early in her career after she was invited to a screening at his home. "Harvey led me into a bedroom - his bedroom - and announced that he wanted to give me a massage. I thought he was joking at first. He was not," she wrote of the encounter, which included Weinstein saying he wanted to take his pants off.

"I told him not to do that and informed him that it would make me extremely uncomfortable," she continued before saying she left his house shortly after.

In another meeting between the pair, Nyong'o said Weinstein asked her to join him in a private room, which she declined. "Though we may have endured powerlessness at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, by speaking up, speaking out and speaking together, we regain that power. And we hopefully ensure that this kind of rampant predatory behavior as an accepted feature of our industry dies here and now," Nyong'o wrote about sharing her story.

Also on Thursday, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed on Twitter that an investigation was ongoing concerning Weinstein and an anonymous Italian model-actress who says Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 2013.

"Mr. Weinstein obviously can't speak to anonymous allegations, but he unequivocally denies allegations of non-consensual sex," a rep for Weinstein told People magazine in response to the investigation.

As the sexual assault and harassment claims have stacked up, Weinstein has been fired from The Weinstein Company, expelled from The Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Oscars, and has had his wife Georgina Chapman announce that she is leaving him.