When Gwyneth Paltrow was 22 years old, she got a role that would take her from actress to star: The film producer Harvey Weinstein hired her for the lead in the Jane Austen adaptation “Emma.’’ Before shooting began, he summoned her to his suite at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for a work meeting that began uneventfully.

It ended with Weinstein placing his hands on her and suggesting they head to the bedroom for massages, she said.

“I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,’’ she said in an interview, publicly disclosing that she was sexually harassed by the man who ignited her career and later helped her win an Academy Award.

She refused his advances, she said, and confided in Brad Pitt, her boyfriend at the time. Pitt confronted Weinstein, and soon after, the producer warned her not to tell anyone else about his come-on. “I thought he was going to fire me,’’ she said.

Rosanna Arquette, a star of “Pulp Fiction,’’ has a similar account of Weinstein’s behavior, as does Judith Godrèche, a leading French actress. So does Angelina Jolie, who said that during the release of “Playing by Heart’’ in the late 1990s, he made unwanted advances on her in a hotel room, which she rejected.

“I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did,’’ Jolie said in an e-mail. “This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.’’

A New York Times investigation last week chronicled a hidden history of sexual harassment allegations against Weinstein and settlements he paid, often involving former employees, over three decades up to 2015. By Sunday evening, his entertainment company fired him.

On Tuesday, The New Yorker published a report that included multiple allegations of sexual assault, including forced oral and vaginal sex. The article also included accounts of sexual harassment going back to the 1990s, with women describing how intimidating Weinstein was.

Several days ago, additional actresses began sharing with the Times on-the-record stories of casting-couch abuses. Their accounts hint at the sweep of Weinstein’s alleged harassment, targeting women on the way to stardom, those who had barely acted, and others in between.

The encounters they recalled followed a similar narrative: First, they said, Weinstein lured them to a private place to discuss films, scripts, or even Oscar campaigns. Then, the women contend, he variously tried to initiate massages, touched them inappropriately, took off his clothes, or offered them explicit work-for-sex deals.

In a statement Tuesday, his spokeswoman, Sallie Hofmeister, said: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances. He will not be available for further comments, as he is taking the time to focus on his family, on getting counseling, and rebuilding his life.’’

Even in an industry in which sexual harassment has long persisted, Weinstein stands out, according to the actresses and current and former employees of the film companies he ran, Miramax and The Weinstein Co. Assistants often booked the meetings, arranged the hotel rooms, and sometimes even delivered the talent, then disappeared, the actresses and employees recounted. They described how some of Weinstein’s executives and assistants then found them agents and jobs or hushed actresses who were upset.

His alleged behavior became something of a Hollywood open secret: When comedian Seth MacFarlane announced Oscar nominees in 2013, he joked, “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.’’ The audience laughed. According to a 2015 memo by a former Weinstein Co. executive that the Times previously disclosed, the misconduct continued.

More established actresses were fearful of speaking out because they had work; less established ones were scared because they did not. “This is Harvey Weinstein,’’ Katherine Kendall, who appeared in the film “Swingers’’ and television roles, remembers telling herself after an encounter in which she said Weinstein undressed and chased her around a living room. Telling others meant “I’ll never work again and no one is going to care or believe me,’’ she reasoned at the time, she said in a recent interview.

Paltrow, 45, is now an entrepreneur, no longer dependent on securing her next acting role. But she emphasized how much more vulnerable she felt at 22, when Weinstein had just signed her up for a star-making part. On a trip to Los Angeles, she received a schedule from her agents for the hotel meeting with Weinstein. There was no reason to suspect anything untoward, because “it’s on the fax, it’s from CAA,’’ she said, referring to Creative Artists Agency, which represented her.

When Weinstein tried to massage her and invited her into the bedroom, she immediately left, she said, and remembers feeling stunned as she drove away. “I thought you were my Uncle Harvey,’’ she recalled thinking, explaining she had seen him as a mentor.

Pitt confirmed the account to the Times through a representative.

Soon after, Weinstein called Paltrow and berated her for discussing the episode, she recalled. (She said she also told a few friends, family members, and her agent.) “He screamed at me for a long time,’’ she said, once again fearing she could lose the role in “Emma.’’ “It was brutal.’’ But she stood her ground, she said, and insisted that he put the relationship back on professional footing.

Even as Paltrow became known as the “first lady of Miramax,’’ very few people knew about Weinstein’s advances. “I was expected to keep the secret,’’ she said.