The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Playwright alleges misconduct by Hoffman when she was 16
ROME — A playwright who says Dustin Hoffman exposed himself to her and had her massage his feet in a hotel room when she was 16 said Friday that she spent years in guilty silence and took pains to not dress suggestively in professional contexts because she assumed the incident was her fault.
Playwright Cori Thomas was a classmate of Hoffman’s daughter in 1980 when she says she met the actor, who invited her to his New York hotel room to wait for her mother after dinner with the teenagers. After his daughter left, Hoffman went to take a shower, Thomas said.
“I was just sitting there waiting for my parents. He came out of the bathroom and had a towel around him and that was the first, ‘Hmm, that is kind of weird,’” Thomas, now 53, said. “And then he dropped the towel, and I think I just like ... I had never seen a naked man. I had never kissed a man.”
Entertainment trade outlet Variety first reported Thomas’ account in a story published Thursday that included another woman’s allegation that Hoffman pushed his hand down her pants in a recording studio while working on the 1987 movie “Ishtar.”
Actress Anna Graham Hunter also has alleged that 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.”
Thomas described her shock and confusion in the hotel room with “a pretty huge star” who she thought of at the moment “as my friend’s dad.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I acted my age. I was 16. I thought, ‘Eewww, yuck,’” Thomas said. “He made a call to someone and he said, ‘Oh I have the most beautiful girl massaging my feet. How old are you?’ and I said 16, and he said ‘She is 16.’ So he knew my age.”
Thomas said she decided to come forward publicly to support Hunter and counter attacks on the actress’ credibility.