CNN  — 

Actress and #MeToo activist Alyssa Milano said Saturday that while it was “difficult” to be in the room when Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, it made her feel “proud” to be a woman and to represent survivors of sexual assault.

“It was a very hard day to be in that room, but I was proud to be a woman and I was proud to be a survivor, and I felt like I needed to be there for other survivors that couldn’t be there,” Milano told CNN’s Ana Cabrera.

“I thought it was important to stand in solidarity with Dr. Ford and all women and men who have been victims of crazy abuses of power,” she added. “And I felt blessed to be able to do that and to be there, no matter how stoic I had to be and sort of prevent myself from, you know, rolling my eyes. I just had to sit there and be stoic, and that was difficult. It was definitely an exercise in how to constrain and restrain yourself.”

Kavanaugh vehemently denied the allegation in his testimony at the hearing and in prior statements.

Milano, who says she was sexually assaulted as a teenager, said that Ford’s testimony provided “a sense of hope.”

“There was a sense of hope in that room, as she spoke, for so many of us that have gone through that,” Milano said of Ford. “I can’t imagine how awful that was, and my stomach was in knots for her, but I felt, and I could see, the relief from her face as it came to an end and she walked out of the room.”

She was at the hearing as a guest of the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

Milano added that watching Ford’s testimony elicited memories of watching Anita Hill’s testimony almost three decades ago.

“It made me so proud … especially remembering Anita Hill in 1991,” she said. “I was almost 20 years old and so that was really a first experience of what the world was going to, the hardships I was going to face in a world that looks at women as second-class citizens.”

“It was powerful,” she added.

Milano also criticized Kavanaugh’s behavior during the hearing, implying that the nominee escaped some criticism for his behavior because he was man.

“If a woman acted like that during a line of questioning, she would have been considered totally unhinged or like she was having a meltdown, which I think proves that he doesn’t have the temperament to be on the Supreme Court,” she said of Kavanaugh.