Disgraced screenwriter, director, and producer Paul Haggis is teaching acting classes in Italy while the woman who sued him for sexual assault years ago is struggling to get him to pay the judgment she won more than a year ago.
Haleigh Breest, a former film publicist, sued the Crash director in 2017, claiming he raped her after a movie premiere four years earlier, when she was 26 and he was 59. A New York jury awarded Breest $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages, of which Haggis has yet to pay a cent.
Instead, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast, the Oscar-winning director is teaching acting workshops in Italy, charging participants $350 each for three-day intensives in the heart of Rome.
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The email account haggisclass@gmail.com started sending out flyers in September advertising “Acting Workshops with Paul Haggis,” in which 20 participants have the opportunity to practice scenes with the Million Dollar Baby screenwriter. (Haggis lists this email address in the bio of his now-private Instagram account, directing followers to contact it to learn more about his workshops.) An email advertising a workshop in early November said the class “fills up quickly” and encouraged those interested to “reserve your spot soon.”
The flier for one workshop offers testimonials from what appear to be three former students, who praise his “energy and passion” and ability to help actors “be focused on the given circumstances and to learn to use them as a tool for reaching the truth.”
“Thanks to Paul and his classes I learned to trust in my dream and to create,” one testimonial reads.
The Daily Beast reviewed emails advertising two such intensives: one in early November and one in early September. Later this month, according to the emails, he will be teaching a redesigned workshop focusing on the audition process. The cost of the class is €330, or about $350.
An attorney for Haggis declined to comment.
During the sexual assault trial, Haggis testified he’d made between $22 million and $25 million over the course of his career, during which he wrote for blockbuster franchises including The Terminator and James Bond. But his attorneys claimed he was “financially decimated” by his legal fees in the case, along with two costly divorces and some other poor financial decisions.
“He’s not going to be able to pay the judgment you’ve already created,” his lawyer told the jury in November 2022, shortly before they awarded Breest an additional $2.5 million. “And there’s no way he can pay anything further.”
But Breest has not backed down, waging a persistent court battle to have the director pay up. This summer, she petitioned the court to order the sale of his $2.9 million Soho apartment and give her the proceeds—a request the court granted late last month.
Breest, a former publicist, is also taking aim at Haggis’s ex wife, Deborah Rennard, to whom she claims in a petition filed this summer that Haggis gave money and property in order to avoid paying the judgment. A judge ordered Rennard to appear in court later this month to face Breest’s allegation that she transferred $20,000 to her ex-husband in violation of a restraining notice.
Breest also filed a separate suit against Rennard last month, accusing her and her ex-husband of a “years-long efforts to hinder, delay or defraud Breest through evading enforcement of the anticipated Judgments by purportedly placing Haggis’s assets out of his hands and into Rennard’s.”
An attorney for Rennard told The Daily Beast his client “vehemently denies the claims and allegations asserted by the plaintiff and will rely on her rebuttal filing submitted to and pending with the court."
Four other women testified in Breest’s favor in Haggis’s trial, three of them claiming the director made unwanted sexual advances and the fourth claiming he raped her. Haggis denied all of it, saying he was “humiliated by these false allegations” and suggesting that the church of Scientology—of which he is a vocal critic—was behind the accusations.
Breest also isn’t the only person asking Haggis to pay up: A legal service used by his attorneys in preparation for trial is suing him for $73,726 in unpaid fees. A New York Supreme Court judge ordered the case to go to trial last November. Haggis has yet to respond.
