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(NewsNation) — Once dubbed (by Vogue, no less!) the “Most Beautiful Woman in the World” Angelina Jolie has long been viewed as a siren by men — but one man didn’t give in to her charms when they were allegedly forced on him.
Corey Levitan, currently a reporter for Casino.org, used to work for the New York Post and when he was first starting out in 1999 he had a more than awkward experience with the actress when he interviewed her for her role in “Girl Interrupted.”
Levitan told me in an interview for my YouTube show “The Scoop,” he was sent to the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills to interview the actress at the behest of his editor at the time.
“We all knew her from ‘Gia’ and for being the crazy girl with the Billy Bob Thornton blood around her neck,” Levitan said. (Jolie was married to Thornton at the time and the two carried vials of each other’s blood around their necks).
In scenes reminiscent of a Harvey Weinstein operation, Levitan said, “I was walked into a suite at the hotel, a bedroom suite at the Four Seasons by her publicist, then left alone across my dining room table. Now this was my second assignment for the post, so I didn’t really know how these things went. I didn’t want to Eff up. That was my major motivation, not effing up,” Levitan recalled.
“So I’ve got my 20 questions, and I know I have a half hour with her, or 25 minutes, whatever it was, so I’m reading the questions. And I get to one about ‘How much of you is in the character?’ and then … I feel, I feel something on my leg. It’s, it’s, it’s her foot. I think, ‘Oh, hey, maybe she uncrossed it or something’.”
But she hadn’t.
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VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 29: Angelina Jolie attends a red carpet for “Maria” during the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2024 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images) -
Director Pablo Larrain, from left, Angelina Jolie, and Alba Rohrwacher pose for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film ‘Maria’ during the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP) -
FILE – Angelina Jolie appears at the 77th Tony Awards in New York on June 16, 2024. The Angelina Jolie-directed war film “Without Blood,” will world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) -
American actress and filmmaker Angelina Jolie at the 81 Venice International Film Festival 2024. Arrival at Lido. Venice (Italy), August 29th, 2024 (Photo by Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images) -
VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 29: Angelina Jolie is seen at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2024 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Victor Boyko/Getty Images) -
VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 29: Angelina Jolie arrives the Hotel Excelsior during the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2024 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images) -
VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 29: Angelina Jolie attends a photocall for “Maria” during the 81st Venice International Film Festival at on August 29, 2024 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images) -
NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 04: 2015 Entertainment Innovator Angelina Jolie Pitt (L) and Brad Pitt attend the WSJ. Magazine 2015 Innovator Awards at the Museum of Modern Art on November 4, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for WSJ. Magazine 2015 Innovator Awards) -
LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 09: Angelina Jolie attends the European Premiere of Disney’s “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” at Odeon IMAX Waterloo on October 09, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Disney) -
FILE – Angelina Jolie, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees special envoy, address a meeting on U.N. peacekeeping at U.N. headquarters on March 29, 2019. Jolie and the United Nations’ refugee agency are parting ways after more than two decades. In a joint statement issued Friday, Dec. 16, 2022, the actress and the agency announced she was “moving on” from her role as the agency’s special envoy “to engage on a broader set of humanitarian and human rights issues.” (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File) -
FILE – Angelina Jolie poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film “Eternals” on Oct. 27, 2021, in London. The Oscar-winning actor has become a lead producer on the Broadway-bound new musical “The Outsiders,” a show based on S.E. Hinton’s novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 coming-of-age crime drama. The Broadway cast and dates have not been revealed yet. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP, File)
Angelina Jolie ‘holds all the power’: Levin
“She’d taken her foot out of her high heel shoe. And, no, it wasn’t a mistake,” Levitan said. “The foot starts making like a cricket with my thighs, and it’s moving up, ladies and gentlemen, it’s moving up to the crotch area… She holds all the power in this relationship, this is sexual harassment. It’s also sexual harassment that every guy I’ve ever told the story to you know is jealous of.”
A severely uncomfortable Levitan tried to ignore the foot in his crotch and powered through the interview acting like Jolie’s foot wasn’t near his genitals.
“My prime concern was not losing this gig (at the New York Post). It was my second story for the Post, so I did the same thing it did in high school when it happened to me, and I swear I would never let that happen again. I just ignored it and sweated and started stuttering, and then she eventually felt sorry and stopped. But she was swirling. She … she… she was in there,” Levitan recalled.
“I’m thinking maybe she wants me to write that that happened and then threaten a lawsuit. I don’t know. Maybe she wants to say that I harassed her or she wants the publicist to find us rolling around on the bed and say that I forced myself on her — I don’t know what it was.”
Reporter on Angelina Jolie interview: ‘I have a case’
Levitan eventually wrote about the incident for Men’s Health — and Jolie never responded.
“It’s not me too sexual harassment,” Levitan said. “I’m not going to file a lawsuit, although any lawyer willing to contact me, (please do) because I have a case.”
I left detailed messages with Jolie’s lawyer, Tara Cole, who didn’t return my calls. I also spoke with Levitan’s former editor who confirmed they remember the story.
Soon after the interview, Jolie split with Thornton (whom she’d met while he was living with his then-girlfriend Laura Dern) for Brad Pitt — who was married to Jennifer Aniston at the time.