Los Angeles, Feb 16 (IANS): Actress Thandie Newton says she was a victim of the casting couch when she was a teenager.

"It was a screen test. There were two other people in the room - the director and the casting director, who was a woman. The director asked me to sit with my legs apart - the camera was positioned where it could see up my skirt - to put my leg over the arm of the chair.

"Before I started my dialogue, (I was told to) think about the character I was supposed to be having the dialogue with and how it felt to be made love to by this person," said Newton, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

"I was thinking, 'This is so strange, why would I need to do that?' But this is the director, there is the casting director, (it) must be normal. I'm 18 years old, you know, and I'm thinking this is, obviously... I was in a protected... there were boundaries," she added.

After three years of the incident, Newton discovered the video was being shown by the director to others in showbiz.

"It turned out the director used to show that video late at night to interested parties at his house - a video of me touching myself with a camera up my skirt," she said.