Rachel Weisz has claimed Hollywood didn't "care" when her friend spoke about an alleged sexual misconduct incident involving Harvey Weinstein 20 years ago.

Rachel Weisz

Rachel Weisz

The 47-year-old actress is close friends with Sophie Dix - who alleged in October that the disgraced producer had sexually harassed her back in 1990 - and Rachel has now claimed she and many others knew about Sophie's claim over two decades ago, but "no-one seemed to care".

Rachel said: "My friend Sophie Dix has been talking about this since the 1990s. She would tell anyone who would listen her story, for the last 20 years. And no one seemed to care."

The 'Denial' actress believes that people are now starting to stand up against the 65-year-old producer - who has been accused of sexually harassing a number of female employees over a 30 year period - because his influence has begun to decline.

She added to ES Magazine: "I think his power was on the wane. Same with Bill O'Reilly, same with Charlie Rose. It's about economics - they weren't turning over the big bucks any more. That's not an optimistic thing to say, but this is all about power and money."

Sophie claimed she was sexually harassed by Weinstein during an interview with The Guardian last year, in which she alleged that in 1990, when she was just 22 years old, Weinstein forced her into a bed and started tugging at her clothes.

The actress said she locked herself in a bathroom for a while and came out to see Weinstein masturbating in front of her, and she later called the alleged incident "the single most damaging thing that's happened to me in my life."

Speaking about her experience, she said at the time: "I was very, very vocal about it at the time. I didn't want to own it. I wanted people to take it away from me. But I was met with a wall of silence. People who were involved in the film were great, my friends and my family were amazing and very compassionate, but people in the industry didn't want to know about it, they didn't want to hear."