Former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein had heart surgery on Monday after experiencing chest pain over the weekend.
Weinstein is serving out a prison sentence in New York’s Rikers Island jail after being convicted by a Los Angeles jury of rape in 2022. He was checked into Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital on Sunday and underwent an operation to remove fluid on his heart and lungs the following day, according to his publicist Juda Engelmayer and prison consultant Craig Rothfeld.
The announcement, reported by ABC News, comes after the disgraced Hollywood titan was hospitalized for testing in late April.
“They examined him and sent him to Bellevue,” Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, told the Associated Press. “It seems like he needs a lot of help, physically. He’s got a lot of problems. He’s getting all kinds of tests. He’s somewhat of a train wreck, health-wise.”
Weinstein was a powerful figure in Hollywood for decades, recognized for producing movies such as Pulp Fiction, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and Inglourious Basterds.
Reports that Weinstein had sexually abused women for decades, including those he managed in Hollywood, surfaced in 2017. He was arrested and charged with rape in New York in the following year. In 2020, Weinstein was convicted of sexually assaulting a former production assistant and raping an actress. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison for the New York conviction, although it was overturned earlier this year.
New York prosecutors are now working to indict Weinstein again for two alleged sexual assaults in the mid-2000s and another sexual assault in 2016.
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The ex-Hollywood producer was also convicted in a separate Los Angeles trial of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, and sexual penetration by a foreign object. He continues to serve out the 16-year sentence handed down to him by the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2022.
More than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexually abusing or harassing them, though he continues to deny their stories.
