Meryl Streep’s representative has called a 1979 interview in which she accused Dustin Hoffman of groping her breast “inaccurate”.
Two women have recently come forward to accuse The Graduate actor of sexual harassment in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and a 1979 interview with Time magazine has resurfaced in which Meryl claimed that Dustin touched her breast.
Describing auditioning for a play that he had directed, she reportedly said, “He came up to me and said, ‘I’m Dustin – burp – Hoffman,’ and he put his hand on my breast. ‘What an obnoxious pig,’ I thought.”
After the 38-year-old interview began circulating on the Internet, her representative issued a statement to E! News early Tuesday morning (07Nov17) stating that the old article is not an “accurate rendering of that meeting.”
“There was an offense and it is something for which Dustin apologized. And Meryl accepted that,” the rep continued.
A spokesperson for Hoffman did not give their own comment but simply referred to Streep’s.
The two went on to star opposite each other in custody battle drama Kramer vs Kramer. Hoffman was previously accused of slapping his co-star and taunting her to get the best performance out of her.
In early November, author Anna Graham Hunter wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter in which she accused Hoffman of grabbing her butt and flirting with her on the set of the 1985 TV movie Death of a Salesman when she was a 17-year-old production assistant.
In response, he issued a statement which read: “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.”
Playwright Wendy Riss Gatsiounis subsequently came forward with allegations about Hoffman, telling the New York Post’s gossip column Page Six that he behaved inappropriately during a meeting in 1991.
