More accusations vs. Hoffman, Singer
Veteran actor Dustin Hoffman and “X-Men” director Bryan Singer face new sexual harassment accusers.
For Hoffman, a second actress has come forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, calling his conduct “a horrific, demoralizing and abusive experience.”
Kathryn Rossetter, who costarred with Hoffman in “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway in 1984, said the Oscar-winner would grope her nightly, demand foot rubs and once pulled her slip over her head to expose her breasts in front of the backstage crew. She said she cried nightly.
Rossetter told her account in The Hollywood Reporter a month after actress Anna Graham Hunter alleged Hoffman groped her and made inappropriate comments when she was a 17-year-old intern on the set of the 1985 TV movie “Death of a Salesman,” in which Rossetter reprised her stage role. Rossetter filmed her part in three days and said she had no knowledge of how Hoffman treated anyone on the set.
Hoffman’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But he has previously denied abusing Hunter, saying her allegations were “not reflective of who I am.”
Rossetter, who went on to have roles in “Speed 2: Cruise Control” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” wrote that Hoffman “left dirty fingerprints on my soul.”
A new lawsuit also ac- cuses “Superman Returns” director Singer of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy at a party on a yacht more than a decade ago. The lawsuit filed in Seattle claims that Singer demanded sex from Cesar Sanchez-Guzman while giving him a tour of the vessel as it sailed on Lake Union and Lake Washington. After the then-teenager refused, the lawsuit says, Singer pushed him on a bed and raped him. In a statement Friday, attorney Andrew Brettler said Singer “categorically denies these allegations and will vehemently defend this lawsuit to the very end.” “Cesar Sanchez-Guzman apparently claims that he did not remember this alleged incident from 2003 until now,” the state- ment said. “Significantly, when Sanchez-Guzman filed for bankruptcy only a few years ago, he failed to disclose this alleged claim when he was supposed to identify all of his assets, but conveniently, now that the bankruptcy court discharged all of his debts, he is able to recall the alleged events.”
The statement also took issue with a lawyer for the accuser, Jeffrey Herman, who filed a sex abuse lawsuit against Singer and other Hollywood executives in 2014 on behalf of former child actor and model Michael Egan.
Within months, Egan’s case was dismissed, and Herman eventually paid a settlement and apologized to two of the executives, saying, “I believe that I participated in making what I now know to be untrue and provably false allegations against you.” Egan pleaded guilty to fraud in an unrelated federal case in 2015.