Cori Thomas claims that in 1980, when she was 16, actor Dustin Hoffman allegedly exposed himself to her in a hotel room and asked for a foot massage. Actress Kathryn Rossetter alleges the actor groped her, asked for massages and attempted to penetrate her with his fingers while the pair worked together on the 1984 Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman. A year later, Anna Graham Hunter, then 17, was a production assistant on the TV movie version of Death, in which Hoffman also starred. During the production, she claims, the actor allegedly sexually harassed her as well, groping her and making lewd jokes. While two other women have also accused Dustin Hoffman of sexual misconduct, Thomas, Rossetter and Hunter were the trio of women that sat down with NBC Nightly News Monday night to publicly discuss their accusations against the actor. Said Thomas of her decision to speak out, “As hard as it is, I think that I wanted to chose truth over shame.”
During the interview, Rossetter shared a similar sentiment about the toll the alleged sexual misconduct took on her emotions. “It eroded my self-confidence and my dignity,” she explained. “It was humiliating and demeaning.” Admits the actress, “People go, ‘How is it to work with Dustin?’ And I tell the half-truth, which is, as an actor working with him, I owe him everything. I learned so much. And then I would stop and there would always be a knot in my stomach about what the real truth was, which is he was abusive and he was a bully.”
According to NBC, Hoffman’s publicist reportedly declined to comment on the interview. However, Hoffman’s attorney Mark A. Neubauer has previously denied Thomas’ claims, as well as assault allegations made by Melissa Kester, calling their stories “defamatory falsehoods” to Variety. In response to Hunter’s account of sexual harassment, which she described in an essay published by The Hollywood Reporter in November, Hoffman issued an apology. “I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation,” Hoffman told THR in response to her story. “I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”
