Eva Green, a French actress known for Casino Royale and Penny Dreadful, was awarded $1 million Friday by a British court after a legal fight with film financiers over a “B-shitty-movie” she feared would harm her career. 

Green sued White Lantern Films and SMC Specialty Finance for the fee she was owed for the planned independent sci-fi project called A Patriot. Set to star in and executive produce the movie in late 2019, earlier this year Green said that she had concerns over the alleged constraints put on her stunt training by production. 

The actor claimed that her training period had been slashed from four weeks to five days, a choice that can be “extremely dangerous for action films,” she said in court. Green also referenced the tragic 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. “You look at what happened with Alec Baldwin on the movie Rust, the producers cutting corners, no safety measures, and a young woman got killed,” she said. (Baldwin, who has denied responsibility in the shooting, recently had his involuntary manslaughter charge dropped.) Green also indicated concern that the dwindling budget would affect the film’s production quality.

Producers filed a counterclaim against Green for breach of contract, arguing that Green never intended for the project to move forward. White Lantern’s legal team also alleged that Green “made unreasonable demands about crew, locations, and equipment,” Reuters reported. Green denied these claims, saying in court: “In the 20 years that I have been making films, I have never broken a contract or even missed one day of shooting.”

Sensational private WhatsApp messages from Green about her would-be collaborators were revealed as part of the court proceedings. Among the correspondence, Green called executive producer Jake Seal “pure vomit,” a “devious sociopath,” and “evil.” She also referred to members of his team as “shitty peasant crew members from Hampshire” after the shooting location was switched from Ireland, according to The Guardian. 

In his judgment in favor of Green, Judge Michael Green said that while the actor “may have said some extremely unpleasant things” about producers and crew members, “this was born from a genuine feeling of concern” that the project “would be of very low quality.” He concluded that Green “did not renounce her obligations under the artist agreement; nor did she commit any repudiatory breaches of it.” The counterclaim was dismissed.

The judge described the actor as “in some senses a frustrating and unsatisfactory witness” and said that while he could “understand the torment it must have been for her to have all her private texts and WhatsApp messages revealed in open court and scrutinized. . . some of her explanations for the language she used and the feelings she expressed—such as they were down to her ‘Frenchness’—were not credible or adequate.”

And, yet. “I have to say that, having heard him give evidence, I can see how it might be possible to take an instant dislike to him,” the judge wrote of Seal. “He was at times patronizing, sarcastic and denigrating. I found him to have an innate aggression and can understand why Ms. Green and others might have been displeased to be told that they had to make the film under his full control.”

After winning her court case, Green released a statement stating that she had been “forced to stand up to a small group of men, funded by deep financial resources, who tried to use me as a scapegoat to cover up their own mistakes” and was “proud that I stood up against their bullyboy tactics.”

The 42-year-old also reacted to criticism of her during the legal battle. “There are few things the media enjoys more than tearing a woman to pieces,” Green said. “It felt like being set upon by hounds; I found myself misrepresented, quoted out of context, and my desire to make the best possible film was made to look like female hysteria. It was cruel and it was untrue.”