The 21-year-old actress who played the role of Muhammad’s bride in the film that led to Muslim riots across the world said she had no idea the film she was acting in was an insult to Islam and that she is receiving threatening messages as a result of her role and fears for her life, the New York Post reported.
“I am so destroyed right now, assaulted with countless threatening messages on my [e-mail] mailbox from incognito user names,’’
the actress, Anna Gurji, told the Post.
The film portrays Islam's Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester.
In a message on Facebook, the actress, who was raised in Georgia in the former Soviet Union, said she and other “Innocence of Muslims”
actors were led to believe they were making a harmless movie called “Desert Warrior.”
“My character, Hilary, was a young girl who is sold (against her own free will) by her parents to a tribe leader known as GEORGE,’’ Gurji wrote.
“There was no mention EVER by anyone of MUHAMMAD and no mention of religion during the entire time I was on the set.”
“The film was about a comet falling into a desert and different tribes in ancient Egypt fighting to acquire it . . . The character GEORGE was a [tribe] leader.”
“People ask what’s my reaction after seeing [the video]. Shock,’’ she wrote. “Two hours after I found out everything that happened, I . . .
could not stop crying.”
She said she “will not go into hiding when I have nothing to hide…It’s painful to see how our faces were used to create something so atrocious without us knowing anything about it at all.’’
The low-budget film sparked a week-long wave of violence. Many of the protests have targeted U.S. diplomatic posts throughout the Muslim world, including one that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, forcing Washington to ramp up security in select countries.
Protesters have directed their anger at the U.S. government even though the film was privately produced and American officials have criticized it for intentionally offending Muslims.
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