Dustin Hoffman is the latest actor to be accused of sexual harassment, following accusations against a growing number of Hollywood power players and amid a wider conversation about sexual predators within the industry.
The Hollywood Reporter today published a guest column from writer Anna Graham Hunter, who interned on the set of Hoffman’s film Death of a Salesman when she was 17.
“He was openly flirtatious, he grabbed my ass, he talked about sex to me and in front of me. One morning I went to his dressing room to take his breakfast order; he looked at me and grinned, taking his time. Then he said, “I’ll have a hard-boiled egg … and a soft-boiled clitoris.” His entourage burst out laughing. I left, speechless. Then I went to the bathroom and cried.”
She kept diaries of her five weeks on set, and published extracts of them in this piece. It included verbatim conversations on set with the then 48-year-old actor.
Dustin said to me today, “So, did you have sex over the weekend like I told you?”
“No.”
“What is this, celibate weekends?”
“Next weekend, OK?”
“No, I’m talking about last weekend. You sure you didn’t?”
“Yes.” I was cracking up.
“Smile if you’re lying.”
She also writes about how a culture of secrecy and cover-up permeated the set. In once instance, she recalls how a female production assistant called him a “pig” after he told her he’d like to eat her breasts for lunch. She then writes how an office assistant said, “If [producer] Bob Colesberry had heard that, she’d be gone in a second.”
The entire extracts, written from the POV of the optimistic teenager in the 1980s, are a startling insight into the complex relationship between predator and victim.
She finds his behaviour disgusting, but she also likes him, and basks in his attention. As she writes in her final week on set: “No one is 100 percent good or bad. Dustin’s a pig, but I like him a lot.”
As a now 49-year-old established writer, she’s able to reflect on her own experiences with a greater sense of understanding.
“Whenever I talk about this, I sense that my listeners want a victim and a villain,” she writes. “And I wish my feelings were as clear as theirs. I would be more comfortable if I felt nothing but revulsion for a man who had power over me and abused it.”
She later continues: “He was a predator, I was a child, and this was sexual harassment. As to how it fits into my own pattern, I imagine I’ll be figuring that out for years to come.”
Following the publication of her piece, Hoffman issued a short statement apologising for his behaviour.
“I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation,” he said. “I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”
