Thaindian News

October 12, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Lisa Rinna is the very latest in the long list of actresses to have accused Hollywood big shots of following the tradition of the proverbial ‘casting couch’.

She disclosed that she had to lose out on a big TV series just because she did not agree to the demands of parting with sexual favors. She was speaking to popeater.com’s correspondent Rob Shuter when she made this startling revelation.

She, however, chose not to name the Hollywood producer who had promised her the role in exchange for sexual favors. She added that she had been a young and impressionable girl of 24 at that time and had to flee the studio in tears. Her husband, Harry Hamlin too, has absolutely no idea about the identity of the producer in question.

Rinna had the satisfaction of warning him that she would bring out all his dirty secrets in the open if he ever tried it a second time either with her or anybody else. She had then been a part of the red carpet brigade, basking in the success of ‘Melrose Place’ when the producer had stopped to congratulate her.

The casting couch is nothing new in Hollywood and even the Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow had a similar tale to tell in the Hollywood issue of Elle’s Women.

Lisa Rinna, in the meantime, tells of her new novel, ‘Starlit’ which is a fictionalized version of the various events, occasions and bitchings that go on in Hollywood. She herself has described her raunchy novel as a ‘roman à clef’ which tells the truth in a disguised form.