In her new film, Evan Rachel Wood says that Marilyn Manson a-b-u-s-e-d her on camera
"Under trickery, I was forced to perform a love scene act for commercial purposes," says the actress about the video of "Heart-Shaped Glasses" in her documentary Phoenix Rising. “It was then that the first crime was committed against me”
In the first part of Phoenix Rising, Evan Rachel Wood's new documentary screened at Sundance, the actress assured that she "was practically r@ped on camera" by Marilyn Manson. The tape details her on-and-off relationship with her musician, who "horribly a-b-u-s-e-d" her from 2006 to 2011, when he was "finally able to escape."
In the video for 'Heart-Shaped Glasses' from Manson's sixth studio album, Eat Me, Drink Me, the singer had her wear a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses like the poster for Stanley's 1962 film Lolita. Kubrick about a man who falls in love with an underage girl. The video shows her grabbing her private parts and having s-x with Manson (whose real name is Brian Warner), while fake blood falls on both of them.
“[The glasses] are so iconic and I met someone who had the sense of humor to know that indeed people were going to joke that it's a Lolita-style relationship/friendship, whatever the case may be. ”, Manson told Spin in 2007.
"It wasn't anything she thought it was going to be," says Wood in the Amy Berg-directed feature. “We did things that had not been proposed to me. We had talked about a fictional love scene, but once the cameras started rolling, he started to really penetrate me. I never agreed to that… It was complete chaos. I did not feel safe and no one cared about me. Shooting the video was a really traumatic experience. I felt unpleasant as if I had done something shameful, and I realized that the team was uncomfortable and nobody knew what to do.
"Under trickery, I was forced to perform a love scene for commercial purposes," she adds in the film. "That's when the first crime was committed against me, I was practically r@ped on camera."
In Phoenix Rising, Wood says the musician was "very clear" about how she had to describe the video in interviews at the time. "I was supposed to say that we had a nice and romantic time, but none of that was true," she explains as an article is shown on the screen in which she claims that the s-x was not real. “But I was afraid to do something that might upset Brian. The video was just the beginning of the violence that would continue to escalate throughout the relationship."
The first part of the film explores her turbulent family life growing up, as well as her troubled relationship with Manson and its aftermath. The actress met him in 2006 when he was 38 and she was 18, and they quickly started dating. "I think [the age difference] coincides with my emotional immaturity," Manson said in an interview at the time. "Being Marilyn Manson, she shouldn't be expected to grow up conventionally."
In the documentary, shot in part before Wood publicly accused Warner of r@pe and abuse, the actress reads from her diaries from that time, looking back on what she calls "red flags." "We became good friends very quickly and had more and more things in common, almost to a terrifying point," she reads aloud.
“At first she was masquerading as, ‘I am here to empower you and set you free. I'm here to show you who you really are,'" she says in the film. "He represented all those things that he wanted to release and not be ashamed of."
Manson told Spin in 2009 that after a breakup with Wood, “Every time I called her (I called 158 times), she would grab a razor blade and cut my face or hands… I wanted to show her the pain that she made me feel, It was like, 'I want you to physically see what you've done to me.'” There he added that "every day he had fantasies about smashing his skull with a sledgehammer."
In an interview with ROLLING STONE in 2016, the actress spoke about having suffered "physical, psychological and s-xual" abuse in the past; the next day, she added in an email, "Yes, I was r@ped by a romantic partner while we were together." "Looking back, it was a typical gender-based violence relationship," she reflected on Self in 2019. "When I read about gender-based violence, it's like reading an autobiography."
But she did not publicly reveal the name of her abuser until February 2021: “My abuser's name is Brian Warner, known to the world as Marilyn Manson […]. He horribly a-b-u-s-e-dme for years.” That same day, four other women also went public with allegations of abuse against him, including mental and emotional abuse, and s-xual and physical violence.
As part of an investigation into Warner, Los Angeles Police raided his home last November and seized "storage devices." The operation came after the ROLLING STONE report on the musician, in which several women accused him of having perpetrated s-xual, physical and psychological abuse against them. More than a dozen women have come forward since the initial complaint, claiming he also a-b-u-s-e-d them. So far, no rep for Manson has responded to the request for a reply, but the performer has previously denied all allegations.
Phoenix Rising details the actress' activism on behalf of s-xual assault survivors. The film describes the creation of the Phoenix Law, a Los Angeles bill that extends the deadline for survivors of gender-based violence to file charges against their attackers. The activism, she says in the film, was in part fueled by hearing other women's abuse allegations against Warner.
"It was like finding out you were dating a serial killer," says Wood.
