Dustin Hoffman Accused of Sexual harassment

My parents went to Las Vegas one New Year’s Eve weekend, and my brother Ronny threw a party. I loved that he let me be part of it—I was 15, and he’s seven years older. I cooked steaks. It was one or two in the morning, and I saw a line of guys standing outside a bedroom door. They said, “Do you want to go next?” “What do you mean?” “Barbara’s in there.” I had met Barbara, a beautiful older woman, about 20. She was what in those days we called a nymphomaniac, which is not a word you hear anymore. She was servicing these guys, one after the other. I had never been laid, and I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I went in. It was dark, and she said, “Is that you, Ronny?” I said yes, lying for fear that she’d reject me. I wasn’t old enough to drive a car, so I thought maybe I wasn’t old enough to drive a woman. I remember whistling because I wanted to appear relaxed as I was taking off my clothes. It was wonderful. I came quickly and kept humping and humping. I thought, Is that all there is? I kept waiting for the next fireworks. The humping went on for about 20 minutes until somebody opened the door. It was just like a movie: A shaft of light was thrown from the hallway onto my face, and she screamed because I wasn’t my brother.

The unsettling thing about his alleged brand of creepiness is that much of it was not even an open secret—it was simply open. Take this 1979 interview in Time magazine, in which Meryl Streep described auditioning for a play Hoffman had directed several years earlier. It was apparently the first time they had met. “He came up to me and said, ‘I’m Dustin—burp—Hoffman,’ and he put his hand on my breast,” Streep said. “What an obnoxious pig, I thought.” (Hoffman doesn’t appear to have responded publicly to this claim from Streep in the years since the interview.)

The hagiographic 1982 biography Dustin Hoffman: Hollywood’s Antihero rounds up several disturbing anecdotes as evidence that Hoffman is a known “womanizer”:

Even Dustin has admitted on occasion that he loves to flirt, claiming that he does it as an involuntary reflex. He has supposedly cornered women in elevators to solicit sex and has even unzipped one woman reporter’s blouse to peek down her chest during an interview. He tries to catch himself, but finds it difficult to overcome the temptation.
Just to be clear: Allegedly unzipping a reporter’s blouse during an interview, cornering presumably unwilling women to ask for sex, tricking a woman into having sex with you by pretending to be someone else, and grabbing your co-workers’ breasts and asses are not examples of “flirting.” Revisiting Hoffman’s reputation is a reminder that in the pre-Weinstein era, all kinds of everyday grotesqueries were excused as a part of the natural ecosystem of male lust and power.

Just to be clear: Allegedly unzipping a reporter’s blouse during an interview, cornering presumably unwilling women to ask for sex, tricking a woman into having sex with you by pretending to be someone else, and grabbing your co-workers’ breasts and asses are not examples of “flirting.” Revisiting Hoffman’s reputation is a reminder that in the pre-Weinstein era, all kinds of everyday grotesqueries were excused as a part of the natural ecosystem of male lust and power.

I remember at one point, I pinched very gently Katharine’s right—probably her right buttocks as a way to help loosen us up. And I kind of patted her and gave her a little [pinch] and she turned on me and later we became friends, but at that moment, she just whirled on me and said, [Hoffman adopts rough, angry voice] “Don’t you ever do that to me again.” And suddenly everybody kind of heard it, the crew and wherever, and I just sat there and they didn’t know what was going on. She said, “How dare you?!” I said, “Sorry, sorry—[Hoffman laughs]—I was just trying to get us relaxed. [Interviewer and crew laughs in background.] Sorry.” And if it was bad up to then, it was gonna get worse after.

She later apologized. She said it was her own tension, too.