Updated April 21, 2018 11:42:14

The actress who helped trigger the #MeToo movement originally planned to expose Harvey Weinstein 20 years ago with a billboard declaring he was a rapist.

Rose McGowan said she was only stopped because the billboard company refused to take her money.

The actress has alleged the Hollywood producer raped her in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. Mr Weinstein has denied all allegations made against him of sexual assault.

The 44-year-old told the ABC she asked the disgraced movie mogul for $US100,000 ($130,445) after the alleged assault and planned to use the money to expose him.

If you've seen Pulp Fiction, Silver Linings Playbook or the Spy Kids films, you already know more about Harvey Weinstein than you might think.

"I wanted to buy a billboard that said he was a rapist. I thought that was the best way of telling people since nobody was listening to me, and nobody was helping me, and shockingly enough, I was not allowed to do that by the billboard company, but that was my intention," she said.

Her comments came the week the New York Times and the New Yorker won the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism for breaking the story of the multiple allegations of harassment and sexual assault made against Mr Weinstein.

Ms McGowan played a key role in the story emerging from Hollywood's secretive culture.

"There's a lot more that went on behind the scenes that people don't know yet. I gave them documents and helped set up the articles. And I spoke in 2016 without saying his name but everybody knew," she said.

The stories were first published in October last year and triggered investigations into abuses perpetrated by other high-profile men around the world.

Ms McGowan said she was optimistic at the time that things were about to change.

"Could I see this happening? I was hoping so, because I wanted to show women that they could cut off the top of the head of power and I wanted to show men you could get rid of the rot and we could all do this together," she said.

Six months later, she wonders whether Mr Weinstein will ever be prosecuted.

"Some days I hope he does get held accountable through the legal system. Other days I just assume nothing is going to happen in that way," she said.

"I believe if he was poor, one, this would never have happened, and also he would have been prosecuted."

The New Yorker expose revealed how Mr Weinstein hired a private intelligence agency run by ex-Mossad agents to spy on Ms McGowan to try to dig up dirt on her to prevent the publication of the abuse allegations that ultimately destroyed his career.

Photo: Harvey Weinstein has denied all allegations of sexual assault made against him. (AP: John Carucci)

"I found out about his army of spies through Ronan Farrow and his wonderful investigative reporting and I found out about all the various lawyers that were in on it and it was a massive machine to keep me silent. It didn't work," she said.

One spy infiltrated her life by posing as a woman who was starting a project to tackle discrimination against women.

There's a generation of Hollywood powerbrokers who've acted like it's still the Stone Age, and as Cameron William writes, it looks like they're no longer going to get away with it.

Part of the manuscript for her memoir Brave was stolen before it was published. After she was told about the undercover operation ordered at Mr Weinstein's behest she no longer knew who to trust.

"My life was a funhouse. I had no idea who was real in it and who was a lie. I could go one of two ways. You can either trust no-one or trust everybody and hope for the best. I chose the latter," she said.

Ms McGowan was raised in a cult called the Children of God till the age of nine. She said she saw the same kind of abusive behaviour in Hollywood as is normally associated with cults, including the worship of powerful charismatic figures and the use of fear to control people.

"That's the basis of my book Brave. I used my stories to tell people how the cult I grew up in is so incredibly similar to the cult of Hollywood," she said.

"He [Weinstein] was thanked at the Oscars as 'God'. So yes, there's that cult-like figure at the top that everyone worships and fears and secretly rumbles about but does nothing but help by their complicity and silence."

She said she could not take legal action against the man who she says raped her in 1997.

"I can't. I have a statute of limitations which I think should be abolished in rape cases and child molestation cases because it takes so long to heal, for people to be able to come forward and speak," she said.

Topics: law-crime-and-justice, sexual-offences, film-movies, united-states

First posted April 21, 2018 07:34:44