Susan Sarandon Sexual Assault: Actress Opens Up about being Exploited during "Disgusting" Casting-Couch Call

Academy Award winning actress Susan Sarandon has been a prominent figure in showbiz for over four decades, but in a recent interview with Elle magazine, the 66-year-old "Dead Man Walking" star opens up about a "disgusting" casting call that she experienced during her youth which ended in a disturbing sexual assault. At the time, Sarandon was just another young hopeful trying to make a name for herself in the cutthroat world of Hollywood, when a caster attempted to sexually exploit her at an audition. Sarandon admits about the disturbing casting-couch experience - "It was not successful - for either of us."

Sarandon didn't reveal to Elle which role she was auditioning for at the time, but she confines: "I just went into a room, and a guy practically threw me on the desk. It was my early days in New York, and it was really disgusting. It wasn't like I gave it a second thought, it was so badly done."

Sarandon had her first successful casting call at the age of 23 for the 1970 film "Joe." Since then, Sarandon has gone on to star in a number of hits (winning prominent awards for many of them). Unfortunately, during the time that Sarandon was attempting to jumpstart her acting career, such "casting-couch" experiences were all too common. In 2010, Sarandon helped launch a worldwide petition to lobby state governments for "Safe Harbor" laws that protect victims of sex trafficking. At the time she had told Wall Street Journal: "We need to put a face to this issue in order to take the problem from abstract to specific."

On a lighter note, Sarandon also admits to Elle that her current relationship with ping-pong entrepreneur Jonathan Bricklin (35) is going great. The duo are even business partners in the ping-pong club SPiN (Sarandon has become quite the ping-pong enthusiast since meeting Bricklin).