Dustin Hoffman sexually harassed me when I was just 17
Writer alleges Hoffman groped her
AN author has accused Hollywood legend Dustin Hoffman of groping her when she was a 17-year-old work experience girl.
Anna Graham Hunter alleges she was sexually harassed by the superstar on the set of a film in 1985 when he was 48.
In a diary she wrote at the time, she said: “When I was walking Dustin to his limo, he felt my ass four times.
“I hit him each time, hard, and told him he was a dirty old man. He took off his hat and pointed to his head (shaved for the part) and said, ‘No, I’m a dirty young man, I have a full head of hair’.”
Hoffman, now 80, has apologised in the wake of the claims.
The Oscar winner, who starred in films such as Rain Main; Kramer vs. Kramer; and The Graduate, becomes the biggest name accused of harassment in the abuse scandal engulfing Hollywood.
Anna, now 49, says she was humiliated and left in tears by Hoffman’s behaviour during her five-week stint as a production assistant in 1985.
Writing for the Hollywood Reporter, she says: “One morning I went to his dressing room to take his breakfast order; he looked at me and grinned, taking his time. Then he said, ‘I’ll have a hardboiled egg... and a soft-boiled clitoris’.
“His entourage burst out laughing. I left, speechless. Then I went to the bathroom and cried.”
She kept quiet publicly about the alleged harassment but detailed it in the diary that she posted to her sister who was in London at the time. In one entry, she wrote: “Today, I realised some things about this business that scare me. First of all, Dustin’s a lech.
“I’m completely disillusioned. After Tootsie, I thought I wanted to marry him.
“Elizabeth [a production assistant] asked him what he wanted for lunch, and he said, ‘Your left breast’.
“[She replied] ‘You’re disgusting’. [He said] ‘OK, your right breast’. [She said] ‘You pig’. She walked away. [Office assistant] Pam said, ‘If [producer] Bob Colesberry had heard that, she would have been gone in a second’.”
Days later she wrote: “I laugh at most things because I don’t want to appear hard-nosed, but sometimes I just can’t.”
Two weeks later she said: “No one is 100 percent good or bad. Dustin’s a pig, but I like him a lot.” Anna said she initially laughed off Hoffman’s alleged advances but that she then explicitly and repeatedly told him to stop – and he agreed.
“Yes, I loved the attention from Dustin Hoffman. Until I didn’t,” she says now.
Anna added the alleged groping did come to an end but that the crude sexual jokes continued.
She claims a supervisor told her to put up with his behaviour and to “sacrifice” some of her values for the sake of the production, in which Hoffman starred as Willy Loman in a made-for-TV version of Death of a Salesman.
Los Angeles-based Anna said she also has many good memories of her time on the set, with some of the best moments including dancing the polka with The Sting star Charles Durning, who died in
2012. Anna added that she recently watched Hoffman in 1976 film All the President’s Men and asked her sister: “Is it weird that I find him kind of sexy in this after what he did?”
She went on to say that despite her mixed feelings she knows the actor’s behaviour was unacceptable.
Anna said: “At 49, I understand what Dustin Hoffman did as it fits into the larger pattern of what women experience in Hollywood and everywhere.
“He was a predator, I was a child, and this was sexual harassment. As to how it fits into my own pattern, I imagine I’ll be figuring that out for years to come.”
It is the latest shockwave to hit the film industry amid the downfall of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, 65, who has been accused of numerous sex assaults. In response to Anna’s claims, Hoffman said: “I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation.
“I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”
The alleged abuse took place at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York, five years after Hoffman married his second wife, Lisa Gottsegen, who he is still with. Questions have been raised about his behaviour in the past. While filming 1979 film Kramer vs. Kramer, he slapped co-star Meryl Streep and taunted her about the death of her boyfriend. Hoffman said it was to improve her performance in a tense scene.
Dad-of-six Hoffman said of his behaviour at the time: “I was getting divorced, I’d been partying with drugs and it depleted me in every way.” On having sex in public places such as the Studio 54 club in New York, he added: “I don’t think it’s a good thing. If I had to do it over again, I would like to rewrite it.”