Cori Thomas was just 16 when she met Dustin Hoffman who she claims exposed himself to her. Photo / AP
Cori Thomas was just 16 when she met Dustin Hoffman who she claims exposed himself to her. Photo / AP
Warning: Distressing content.
A friend of Dustin Hoffman's daughter claims the actor exposed himself to her while she was still in high school.
Cori Thomas was just 16 when she met the Oscar winner - who has recently been accused of sexual misconduct with multiple women. Hoffman's lawyer called the accusations "defamatory falsehoods."
Thomas, a high school classmate of Hoffman's daughter Karina at the United Nations International School in New York, said that in 1980 she'd joined the father and daughter for an afternoon in Manhattan, visiting bookshops and dining together at Jim McMullin's on the Upper East Side, according to the Daily Mail.
Cori Thomas, pictured in her younger days, says the esteemed actor came out the shower and dropped his towel while she was in his hotel room. Photo / Twitter
Her parents were supposed to be picking her up from the restaurant, but Thomas - then an aspiring actress - told Variety that Hoffman had suggested they leave a note for her parents at the restaurant, telling them to pick her up from his hotel.
The three went up to Hoffman's hotel room but soon after, she says that either Karina or Dustin suggested her classmate should go home "because it was a school night and she had homework."
She was left alone with the actor, then 43, who she says decided to take a shower as she waited for her parents to pick her up.
A few minutes later, she claims he walked out the bathroom with a towel wrapped around him.
Cori Thomas was just 16 when she met Dustin Hoffman who she claims exposed himself to her. Photo / Getty Images
Then the towel dropped.
"He was standing there naked. I think I almost collapsed, actually. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified. I didn't know what to do.
"And he milked it. He milked the fact that he was naked. He stood there. He took his time."
Thomas says that Hoffman eventually put on his robe but then asked her to massage his feet. As a flustered, naive teen, she did as she was asked.
"I didn't know what to do in the circumstance," she said. "I didn't know that I could say no, so I did it. And he kept telling me, 'I'm naked. Do you want to see?'"
She said she pretended not to hear the sexual comments.
Thankfully, the phone rang, interrupting the moment, which was her mother who had arrived to pick her up.
Thomas said she was left "humiliated" by the incident and didn't tell her mother, attorney Zuleika Thomas, although her mom always suspected something had occurred.
Now a successful playwright and mother-of-one, Thomas said she only felt ready to talk about the incident seven years later - after the birth of her daughter - when she told a close relative.
Thomas was a friend of Hoffman's daughter Karina (pictured with her father in 1982). Photo / Getty Images
She only told her mother what happened recently, and never confessed to Hoffman's daughter Karina, who remained a close friend and was even a bridesmaid in her wedding, until now.
Thomas is one of many women to accuse Hoffman of inappropriate sexual behavior over the years.
Melissa Kester claims she was assaulted by Hoffman when she was recording audio for film Ishtar in the mid 1980s.
Then a recent college graduate, Kester said she was working in the studio where Hoffman was laying down vocal tracks for the movie.
She's met the actor a couple of times previously, but on their third meeting, she said he digitally penetrated her while they were standing together in the recording booth - while her unknowing boyfriend and another sound engineer stood just feet away, on the other side of the soundproof glass, in the control room.
"He literally just stuck his fingers down my pants," Kester said. "And the thing I feel most bad about is I didn't know what to do. I just stood there. I just froze in the situation like 'Oh my god, what is happening?' It's shocking when that happens to you.
"He kind of laughed," she said. "Then I just ran out of there, and I sat in the bathroom crying. I thought, 'Oh my God.' I felt like I'd been raped. There was no warning. I didn't know he would do that."
Hoffman, she said, tried calling her after the incident until she told him never to speak to her again.
She later told a friend about the incident although didn't share all the details.
Another woman, who chose to remain anonymous, told Variety Hoffman assaulted her in the back of a car while she too was working on Ishtar, as an extra aged 22.
He'd offered her a ride home from the movie's wrap party in his driver's station wagon which quickly filled up with other people. She says they lay next to each other in the back, with other passengers just inches away, when she says he slid his hand under her skirt.
"I didn't know what to do. He's smiling at me. I was frozen. I was outside of my body."
She said she was too shocked and terrified to react.
"What are they going to think of me, that I'm a whore, if a say something? What would I say? He's Dustin Hoffman."
She said that as the driver dropped her off, he whispered to her to get a taxi to his apartment building San Remo, slipping $20 in her hand.
The woman says she was still in shock and did as he suggested.
When she arrived, they had consensual sex.
The women are the latest to speak out about allegations of Hoffman's sexual harassment or assault.
Kathryn Rossetter (left) says Dustin Hoffman (right) groped her almost nightly during the 1984 run of Death of a Salesman. Photo / Kathryn Rossetter
Kathryn Rossetter, who played Hoffman's mistress in the 1984 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and subsequent TV movie, claims he groped her on stage nightly and refused to stop even when she tearfully pleaded with him to leave her alone.
In addition to violating her on a daily basis, she says Hoffman also squeezed her breasts anytime they took pictures together.
The 66-year-old actress says being serially assaulted by her "hero" was "horrific" and "demoralising" -and something she still deals with today.
Rossetter told her story in her own words in an essay for the Hollywood Reporter, published on Friday.
As soon as they started rehearsals for the play, Rossetter says Hoffman crossed a line and started sexually harassing her relentlessly.
She says the first time he got inappropriate was three days into rehearsals, when he asked her to stop by his hotel room after the two had lunch together.
"When we stepped into the room, he jumped on the bed and said, 'Give me a back rub.' He pulled off his shirt. I didn't know what to do. I said we had to be back at rehearsal in 15 minutes. He said, 'Just a quickie.'
"I was a nervous wreck, but sat on the bed and gave a very lame rub. The maid walked in and I almost fainted. He laughed. As we prepared to leave, he looked at me and said, 'Now we have our hotel room.'
"Ah, I thought — Method Acting! I was his mistress and our scenes were set in a hotel room and Biff walks in. He told me to return to rehearsal a few minutes after he did and left me there," she recalled.
But the awkward exchange turned out to be the first of many more disturbing incidents.
'"That was the beginning of what was to become a horrific, demoralising and abusive experience at the hands (literally) of one of my acting idols," she said.
Rossetter says Hoffman went so far as to start groping her off stage, between their scenes.
Actor Dustin Hoffman. Photo / AP
"One night in Chicago, I felt his hand up under my slip on the inside of my thighs. I was completely surprised and tried to bat him away while watching the stage for my cues. After the show he was busy with the producer and director so I had no access to him to address it. It then happened almost every show. Six to eight shows a week.
"I couldn't speak to him in the moment because I was on a live mic. He kept it up and got more and more aggressive. Night after night I went home and cried," she said.
Rossetter recalls a particularly rough night, when Hoffman went so far as to pull her costume - a slip - over her head to expose her breasts. She says this happened in front of a group of male crew members and she later learned Hoffman had promised them a "surprise" if they gathered near her backstage.
The shock of the violation had caused her to miss her cue to laugh and she was chewed out by her fellow actors afterward.
She says she tried to tell one of the actors what happened, but he said it was her "fault and walked away".
On another occasion, Rossetter says she was summoned to Hoffman's room in the middle of the play by his dresser. She thought he wanted to give her notes on a scene, but instead he asked her to give him a massage.
"He wanted me to rub his feet. Get on my knees and rub his feet. I froze. I gave a little foot rub and ran out," she said.
She says this happened on multiple occasions, and each time Hoffman's dresser would wait outside the room standing guard.
Rossetter said she felt "trapped" in these situations since they were just feet from the stage. If she yelled out, the audience would hear.
And it wasn't just on the job that Hoffman harassed Rossetter. She says he regularly groped her breasts whenever they took pictures together.
While Hoffman was skilled at moving his hand away before the picture was taken, she says she once caught him in the act. She shared the image with the Hollywood Reporter.
Rossetter says she "tried everything to get him to stop" but Hoffman was relentless.
"I tried to laugh it off, smack him and say witty, pointed things. I begged him nicely with tears in my eyes to please stop it. To no avail," she said.
She even considered reporting Hoffman to Actors Equity, but was convinced not to by colleagues who said it could ruin her career.
"I was cautioned by some respected theatre professionals that if I did, I would probably lose my job and, because he was such a powerful star, any hope of a career. It was Dustin's playpen. He controlled the purse strings," she said.
Cori Thomas was just 16 when she met Dustin Hoffman who she claims exposed himself to her. Photo / AP
Hoffman declined to comment on Rossetter's essay to the Hollywood Reporter.
Hoffman's essay was published a little over a month after Anna Graham Hunter wrote a similar account of Hoffman's harassment.
In an essay also published in the Hollywood Reporter, Hunter said Hoffman repeatedly groped and harassed her when she was a 17-year-old production assistant on the Death of a Salesman movie. Since then, the Hollywood Reporter says they've heard from several more women who claim they were harassed by Hoffman as well, in incidents dating back to the 1970s
Shortly after Hunter's story was published, Wendy Riss Gatsiounis told Variety about how Hoffman asked her several sex-fueled questions during a business meeting in 1991.
Hoffman's handsy-behavior has been somewhat well known for years. Both Meryl Streep and Katherine Ross have recalled in past interviews how the actor groped them during auditions.
But it wasn't until the stories resurfaced during the ongoing 'Me Too' movement that Hoffman has faced significant public scrutiny over his actions.
On Monday, John Oliver confronted the movie legend about the allegations at a film screening, but Hoffman denied the claims in a heated exchange with the pundit.
