Lisa Riley was once told to have sex with her boss to better her career.
The ‘Loose Women’ panellist – who has previously worked on the likes of ‘Emmerdale’, ‘Coronation Street’ and ‘Butterfly Kiss’ – was horrified to find a senior, married, figure on an unspecified project left details of his hotel room number for her, but her colleague tried to reassure her it was standard practice for their industry.
Speaking on the brunchtime show on Wednesday (18.10.17), the 41-year-old actress said: "For me, personally, in my early 20s, we used to go and make films and TV shows where all the cast and all the crew would go and live together under one roof in a hotel – you’d be away from your family and your partner at the time – and this period for me, I was single. We were filming.
"We were there for two or three months and we were about a month and a half into the shoot and we were in the bar after work – having a glass of wine – and this man, who was in a very high position within the film that I was working on, as I went to the bathroom and came back, I looked at my cigarette box, and there was a number – a three digit number. I turned to my friend and said: ‘What’s that?’ And she said: ‘It’s his room number.’ And I was like: ‘But he’s married with three beautiful children.’ And she went: ‘It’s the norm, everyone does it.’ And I said: ‘This girl doesn’t!’ "
The brunette star believes that a lot of other females within the showbiz industry would use their sexuality to better their careers – but no one reported it or spoke out about it because so many people did it, it became the "normal" thing to do.
She explained: "For me personally, yeah it’s gone on for years and years. It’s not that people have turned a blind eye, it was just there and it happened continuously.
"I do believe this girl in question wanted to blow her own career up and I wanted a career through talent. People knew that he’d done it before and got jobs because of it."
Lisa Riley was told to have sex with boss for better career
