Dustin Hoffman: Worse than I ever dared imagine

I never liked his hair.

There's an article in The Express Tribune about Dustin Hoffman. It's a Pakistani newspaper, so, happily, this news is spreading world-wide.

"Graham Hunter’s account has prompted a new examination of Hoffman’s reputation within Hollywood," the article says. "The unsettling thing about his alleged brand of creepiness is that much of it was not even an open secret—it was simply open."

Graham Hunter was the woman who reported being sexually harassed and assaulted by Hoffman when she was a 17-year-old intern.

The article focuses on Meryl Streep's statements about Hoffman over the years.

The article quotes a 1979 Time magazine article in which Streep described her first meeting with Hoffman:

“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.

 Streep’s story echoes Hoffman’s own account of “very gently” pinching his Graduate co-star Katharine Ross’ rear end during their first screen test. He did it, he said in a 1992 interview, “as a way to help loosen us up.”

...
“I’m a flirt,” the actor told Peoplemagazine in a 1983 cover story. “I also have a lot of chauvinism, a lot of womanizing in my past. It’s hard for me to find a woman unattractive, unless she’s angry or down on herself.” 

He once told Playboy that he lost his virginity at 15 to a 20-year-old “nymphomaniac” when he pretended, in a darkened room, to be his older brother, Ronny. 

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.” 

I didn't especially like Dustin Hoffman before this. The more times I sat through Kramer vs Kramer the less I liked him. With the onset of middle age, I stopped liking The Graduate which was pretty much a standard romantic comedy/stalker film, but one in which the girl's entire family is left shattered. I liked Straw Dogs and I didn't hate Marathon Man, but not because of him.

Tootsie was overrated, my hatred of Tom Cruise distorted my perception of Rain Man, I didn't like Straight Time. Ishtar was good but I'll have to reassess my feelings about All the President's Men.

For years I didn't like Walter Brennan. I felt guilty about it. He couldn't help what he looked like or sounded like. Then I found out he backed George Wallace for president. I relaxed and freely hated him. I think it'll be the same with Dustin Hoffman now.