NEW YORK — An aspiring actress who met Harvey Weinstein by chance in 2014 detailed in tears Tuesday how she said the media mogul made her stand in front of a mirror in his hotel room in Cannes, France, while he stood behind her, groping her and forcing her to perform a sex act after pretending to be interested in her career.

Kadian Noble, 31, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan a day earlier. Her attorney Jeff Herman said he sued under a criminal sex trafficking statute of engaging in commercial sex act overseas because Weinstein is a U.S. citizen who coerced Noble under the guise of helping with her career.

“By offering Kadian help with her career, and then getting her to comply with his advances – that’s the quid pro quo,” Herman said. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

A spokeswoman for Weinstein said he “denies allegations of non-consensual sex” and “has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”

Noble detailed the incident to reporters, saying that she met Weinstein by chance in 2014 at an after-party for the British Academy Film Awards, where he introduced her to Oprah Winfrey and Naomi Campbell, and she felt dazzled and lucky when he said he was interested in her.

He told her to contact an assistant and send them a demo reel. Later that year, he approached her in a hotel lobby at Cannes, which flattered her, and he suggested they look at her reel in his hotel room, she said. But when she got up there, it slowly dawned on her he was after something else. “He was repeating to me, ‘I need to know that you really like me,”‘ she said. “At this point it became a little bit confusing but still I had a lot of hope.”


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