In another episode of the daily series "Who will be the one to find out how he sexually harassed women and / or minors all these years?" (working title), we find today the protagonist Dustin Hoffman, who is charged by Anna Graham Hunter that he sexually harassed her during the filming of the TV movie "The Death of the Merchant", in 1985.
Hunter, who was then 17 years old and working as a production assistant on the TV movie, gave a detailed description to The Hollywood Reporter, citing several cases in which Hoffman grabbed her buttocks or made vulgar sexual comments in front of the rest of the group. In fact, most of what Hunter narrates are in excerpts from letters sent by the then 17-year-old girl to her sister, during filming.
According to Hunter's interview, on her very first day of filming, Hoffman asked her to massage his feet. Things moved quickly beyond that, with Hoffman commenting openly, in front of others, on his view of women's breasts: John Malkovich, Stephen Lang and Arthur Miller. Shortly afterwards, he asked Hunter, "Did you have sex over the weekend, as I told you?"
After 10 days at work, Hunter heard Hoffman answer another woman when she asked him what he wanted for lunch: "Your left breast." When she replied "You are disgusted", he said: "Okay, your right breast". According to Hunter, on the same day, when accompanying Hoffman in his limousine, he touched her butt several times. She clapped his hand to remove it, jokingly calling him a "porn star", and he, pointing to his head, replied "No, I'm porn-young, I have all my hair."
A few days later, Hunter wrote to her sister, "Today the industry has become more scary. Or at least, less attractive. " Hunter had asked Hoffman what he wanted for breakfast and he had replied "a hard-boiled egg and a soft-boiled clitoris".
According to Hunter on THR, one day Hoffman heard her discuss his behavior with his assistant, Frankie, and "exposed" her in front of the cast and technicians. He hit her in the hallway and shouted at her: “Anna! So you think I'm a sexist pig eh? Anna! ». Then she replied that he did not appreciate "his comments and his long arms". As Hunter later comments, Hoffman seemed to regret his behavior and apologized to her, while from that day on he began to treat her more politely, helping her in her work and here and there he flirted with her but with a more innocent way. However, when Warren Beatty visited the set one day, Hunter strongly commented on Hunter's reaction to the arrival of the famous star as follows: "You could very well have been naked. It was like saying, "Kiss me, kiss me, Warren."
At the end of the interview, Hunter confesses that she had conflicting feelings about Hoffman, as she believed that "he is a pig, but I like him very much". But even though she respected him as an actor at the time and felt both fascinated and rejected as a character, she is now able to see clearly what was happening at the time. "At 49, I now understand that Dustin Hoffman did something that fits exactly with the general pattern of women in Hollywood, and everywhere. "He was a predator, I was a child, and that was sexual harassment."
Hoffman replied almost immediately in Hunter's accusations, in turn making a statement through The Hollywood Reporter, in which he states: "I have an insurmountable respect for women and I feel awful that anything I could have done could have put her in a difficult position. I apologise. It does not reflect who I am. "
At least .