A woman has accused Dustin Hoffman of sexually harassing her while she interned as a production assistant on the set of the 1985 Death of a Salesman TV film — when she was just 17.
In a column for The Hollywood Reporter, actress Anna Graham Hunter said the actor was “openly flirtatious” with her, asking for a foot massage, groping her bum and talking about sex to her.
“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,'” Hunter recalled. “His entourage burst out laughing. I left, speechless. Then I went to the bathroom and cried.”
Although Hunter kept quiet about the alleged harassment until recently, she revealed that she had copies of mailed dispatches to her sister in London from her five weeks on set detailing the encounters.
The writer said she felt conflicted about the situation because there were so many positive experiences on the set, including dancing polka with Charles Durning, Arthur Miller calling her by her first two names and hanging out with the crew on long days.
“And yes, I loved the attention from Dustin Hoffman. Until I didn’t,” she wrote.
Even recently, Hunter said she watched All the President’s Men and asked her sister, “Is it weird that I find him kind of sexy in this after what he did?”
However, looking back at her experiences with other men, Hunter knows the actor was wrong.
“At 49, I understand what Dustin Hoffman did as it fits into the larger pattern of what women experience in Hollywood and everywhere,” she said. “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.”
Hoffman told The Hollywood Reporter in response to the story, “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.”
