Dustin Hoffman faces major accusations in a Variety report published Friday that alleges he exposed himself to a 16-year-old classmate of his daughter’s in 1980 and assaulted two other women while working on 1987′s “Ishtar.”
The allegations fit a pattern of behavior similar to other recent accusations made against the 80-year-old actor.
Cori Thomas told Variety she attended high school with Hoffman’s daughter Karina and spent a day with the two of them walking around Manhattan in 1980.
Hoffman, who was in the process of divorcing Karina’s mother, suggested his daughter go back to her home because it was a school night and said Thomas could wait for her parents at the hotel where he was saying.
“So she left, and I was left in the hotel room with him alone,” Thomas said. “I was just sitting there waiting for my parents.”
Several minutes later, the actor allegedly came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around him. Thomas said he then dropped the towel.
“He was standing there naked. I think I almost collapsed, actually. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified,” she said.
The actor eventually put on a robe and sat on the bed. Thomas said Hoffman asked her to massage his feet.
“I didn’t know what to do in the circumstance,” she said. “I didn’t know that I could say no, so I did it. And he kept telling me, ‘I’m naked. Do you want to see?’” Thomas said.
Thomas said she never told Karina about the incident, even though the actor’s daughter was a bridesmaid in her wedding.
Variety also interviewed two other women, one of whom wished to remain anonymous, about encounters they had with Hoffman.
Melissa Kester said she was in a recording studio watching Hoffman record vocals for “Ishtar” when he asked her to come into the booth because he was bored and needed inspiration.
“I’m thinking that it’s kind of flirtatious and funny, like he’s holding onto me, because I’m going to help him sing better,” she told Variety. “I felt awkward. It’s a little weird. He’s hugging me while he’s singing. But ha ha ha, it’s all a joke. My boyfriend is right there.”
As Hoffman continued with the take, Kester says he started to take liberties with her.
“He literally just stuck his fingers down my pants,” Kester said. “He put his fingers inside me. And the thing I feel most bad about is I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there. I just froze in the situation like ‘Oh my god, what is happening?’ It’s shocking when that happens to you.”
Another woman told Variety about an alleged incident during a wrap party for “Ishtar,” when she was 22 years old. The actor allegedly “stuck his fingers right up inside of me,” she said, while they were driving in a car with others.
Hoffman did not comment on the allegations in the Variety story, but his attorney Mark A. Neubauer of Carlton Fields Jordan Burt called the accusations “defamatory falsehoods.”
The alleged assaults are just the latest made against the actor in the last six weeks.
Earlier this month, actress Kathryn Rossetter said that when she worked with Hoffman in 1985 on “Death of a Salesman,” he repeatedly groped her during the run of the play and also digitally penetrated her.
In early November, Hoffman was accused of sexually harassing a 17-year-old intern on the set of the 1985 TV adaptation of the same Arthur Miller play. Anna Graham Hunter said the actor asked her to give him a foot massage her first day on set.
Hoffman responded to her allegations with this statement:
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.
That response led late-night host John Oliver to call out Hoffman during a pre-screening panel discussion about the 20th anniversary of the film “Wag the Dog” on Dec. 4.
The “Last Week Tonight” host zeroed in on Hoffman’s phrase “It is not reflective of who I am,” which he called a “cop out.”
“It’s that kind of response to this stuff that pisses me off because it is reflective of who you were if it happened and you’ve given no evidence to show that it didn’t happen,” Oliver told the actor. “Then there was a period of time for awhile when you were creeping around women.”
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