Actress Pam Grier has had to turn down projects about sexual assault with "major" filmmakers because she refuses to revisit painful experiences from her own past.
The Jackie Brown star previously detailed the traumas she suffered during her youth in her 2010 memoir, Foxy: My Life In Three Acts, and the incidents have left her very weary about tackling such roles onscreen - because she fears she "might snap".
"I was sexually attacked and raped at the age of six, and then again at 18 in college, and then there was a third attack that I fought off. I couldn't believe what was happening. I didn't understand it," she tells syndicated columnist Allison Kugel.
"But I know that I cannot portray that in a movie, because I don't want to revisit those moments and emotions."
Pam is currently working on her own movie biopic, based on her autobiography, and she is well aware there may be some women who feel the same way.
"A lot of actresses who will be up for the casting to play me in the film of my life, many of them may have had those same experiences and won't be able to relive them, OK?" she continues. "Not everyone can do that; not everyone wants to revisit that.
"If they can, it will be fantastic, but I know that I have had to turn down roles that have those kinds of attacks, because I couldn't do it. I had to pass.
"There were major directors and producers through the years, where they didn't know why I was passing, but I just passed. I knew I might snap. I don't know if I can go there. Not every actor can play every role, and there is a reason, and it may be private."
The actress, who turns 70 later this month (May19), has been developing her life story for the big screen for the past few years.
She recently admitted she wanted her Crooklyn filmmaker Spike Lee to direct the project, in which funnyman Jay Pharoah is set to play her former lover, late comic legend Richard Pryor.
