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Uma Thurman Feels 'Violated' After Inappropriate Kiss With Entrepreneur

Uma Thurman Feels 'Violated' After Inappropriate Kiss With Entrepreneur
Lapo Elkann and Uma Thurman attend the amfAR's 23rd Cinema Against AIDS Gala at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on May 19, 2016 in Cap d'Antibes, France.
Gisela Schober via Getty Images
Lapo Elkann and Uma Thurman attend the amfAR's 23rd Cinema Against AIDS Gala at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on May 19, 2016 in Cap d'Antibes, France.

Reminder: Uma Thurman -- or any other woman -- is not here for you to kiss whenever you feel like it.

The "Burnt" actress was subjected to a highly inappropriate and unwanted kiss from Italian entrepreneur Lapo Elkann at amFAR's 23rd annual Cinema Against AIDS gala on Thursday. The businessman decided to go in for a kiss after winning $196,000 bid for a Victoria's Secret show package, but the moment wasn't sweet or funny or cute. It was sexual harassment.

"It is opportunism at its worst. She wasn't complicit in it," Thurman's rep, Leslie Sloane, told The Huffington Post in a statement. "Somewhere in his head he must have thought it an appropriate way of behaving. It clearly wasn't. She is very unhappy that this happened to her and feels violated."

Lapo Elkann and Uma Thurman attend the amfAR's 23rd Cinema Against AIDS Gala at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on May 19, 2016 in Cap d'Antibes, France.
Gisela Schober via Getty Images
Lapo Elkann and Uma Thurman attend the amfAR's 23rd Cinema Against AIDS Gala at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on May 19, 2016 in Cap d'Antibes, France.
Not OK.
Gisela Schober via Getty Images
Not OK.
So unfortunate.
Gisela Schober via Getty Images
So unfortunate.

The moment is reminiscent of Adrien Brody's 2003 Oscar win, when he decided that an Academy Award gave him the right to make out with presenter Halle Berry on live television:

This incident between Thurman and Elkann (as well as Berry and Brody) is gross. It's important to point out that this kind of harassment has no place at a charity auction -- or any other space, for that matter.

No one should be made to feel uncomfortable by unwanted sexual advances. No one has the right to decide that they are allowed to kiss, touch or invade the personal space of another human being without their permission. Uma Thurman may be a beautiful actress, one whose image is consumed on screen, but she does not exist for the pleasure of men like Elkann.

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