The Grabuate
Bustin’ Hoffman for groping
Yet another woman has come forward to accuse two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman of sexually harassing and groping her — calling it a “horrific, demoralizing and abusive experience.”
Actress Kathryn Rossetter, who co-starred with Hoffman in TV and Broadway productions of “Death of a Salesman,” detailed the disturbing allegations in a first-person essay published Friday in The Hollywood Reporter.
She claimed the actor groped her backstage “night after night” when he played Willy Loman and she Loman’s mistress in the 1984 production of the Arthur Miller play. She also said he grabbed her breasts when they posed for photos together at parties.
“Whenever he had a picture taken with me, he would put his arm around my rib cage and then grab my breast just before they snapped the picture and then remove it. He was very skilled at dropping his hand just as the picture snapped to avoid it being recorded,” she recalled. “Only by luck do I have one such picture — where the camera caught him in the act. A picture I had taken with hopes of sending it to my family. A millisecond in time.
“There I am — big smile and my arm moving toward his with the intention to push it away. But caught as it is, it seems I’m complicit with the gesture. I was not. Not ever.”
The actress said she became so fed up with Hoffman groping her during photos that she grabbed his crotch one time — and that picture ended up in Playboy magazine.
“There in the back was a picture of me and Dustin and the other actress, and I am apparently, gleefully grabbing his genitals,” Rossetter wrote. “Yes, the millisecond had caught the act. But it hadn’t captured the story.”
During performances, Hoffman would allegedly slide his hands under her slip backstage as she waited in the wings for a cue to laugh into a microphone.
“One night in Chicago, I felt his hand up under my slip on the inside of my thighs. I was completely surprised and tried to bat him away while watching the stage for my cues,” she said.
“It then happened almost every show. Six to eight shows a week. I couldn’t speak to him in the moment because I was on a live mic. He kept it up and got more and more aggressive. One night, he actually started to stick his fingers inside me. Night after night, I went home and cried.”
Hoffman has been accused by two other women of sexual harassment, including Anna Graham Hunter, who said he groped her when she was a 17-year-old intern on the set of the TV ver- sion of “Death of a Salesman.”
Rossetter said Hoffman repeatedly asked her for foot rubs when they worked together, encouraging her to massage “higher, higher.”
“I didn’t do it. I would stop at his calves,” Rossetter wrote.
At one point, she alleged, Hoffman pulled her slip over her head backstage, exposing her naked body to the crew and causing her to miss a cue.
“When at last I found an opportunity, I pushed Dustin up against the wall screaming, ‘F--k you! How would you like it if someone did that to you before you walked out onstage every night, Mr. Method Actor?’ ” she said.
He stopped for three days, “then it was back to groping as usual,” Rossetter alleged.
A Hoffman spokesperson declined to comment. The actor has denied abusing Hunter, saying her claims are “not reflective of who I am.”
I felt his hand up under my slip . . . It then happened almost every show. Six to eight shows a week. — Kathryn Rossetter on Broadway co-star Dustin Hoffman’s alleged behavior in the 1980s.