I wasn’t so surprised to see Dustin Hoffman “outed” as a sexual predator, groper, abuser. I’d read a story about how he treated Meryl Streep on the set of Kramer v Kramer and he’s a pig. But I was surprised, somewhat, at many women he abused physically, verbally and emotionally over the years, and how many women’s careers and lives were nearly ruined because of it.
Cases in point: Anna Graham Hunter was seventeen when she worked with Hoffman in 1985 and says Hoffman harassed her and assaulted her on a daily basis. And, in 1991, he did the same thing with playwright Wendy Riss Gatsiounis.
Last week, when John Oliver simply asked Hoffman for an explanation regarding what these women, and others, have said, Hoffman got pissy, defensive and claimed he’d never met Anna Graham Hunter. And then he used his role in Tootsie as the reason he could never be a pig because he played the character onscreen and loves women and would never!
And yet now others have come forward, like Kathryn Rossetter, who costarred with Hoffman in Death of a Salesman on Broadway and on TV, who says she auditioned for Death of a Salesman because she admired Hoffman as an actor and was thrilled that he pushed for her to get the part. But, when rehearsals began, Hoffman got her into his hotel room and demanded a back rub; she says she gave him a “lame” back rub that ended when the maid interrupted them. When the play began, however, the harassment and assault intensified:
“Since they loved my laugh, it was decided that I would stand in the wings … and laugh on cue in a memory scene. … That scene led directly into the scene in the second act with Dustin and me in the hotel room and Biff walking in on us. My costume was a vintage slip, no bra, garter belt and stockings. The wing space was limited, so directly behind me was a chair where Dustin would sit … 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. After the show he was busy with the producer and director so I had no access to him to address it. It then happened almost every show. Six to eight shows a week … One night he actually started to stick his fingers inside me. … I withdrew and got depressed … How could the same man who fought to get me the job, who complimented my work, who essentially launched my career, who gave me the benefit of his wisdom as an actor, how could he also be this sexual power abuser?”
Perhaps because he felt a sense of ownership over a woman because he “helped’ or maybe it’s just because he’s a pig; at any rate …
“The groping continued. After the shows 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. … 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.”
Rossetter says one night Hoffman told crew members he was going to assault her and they all gathered backstage to watch him pull down her slip and reveal her breasts.
Pig. But there may be revenge, in a way that would hurt an ego like Tiny Dustin the most; he has a new film coming out and there was … was … talk of an Oscar nomination. Maybe this story will stop that.
Again. Pig.
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