'It was humiliating and demeaning': Actress Kathryn Rossetter hits out at 'abusive bully' Dustin Hoffman for making her life hell as she's joined by two more of his accusers for their first joint TV interview

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Kathryn Rossetter branded Dustin Hoffman 'abusive' and a 'bully' during the first joint TV interview with two other women who accuse him of sexual misconduct.

The actress was joined on NBC's Nightly News by Cori Thomas, who says Hoffman exposed himself to her when she was 16, and Anna Graham Hunter, who says the Oscar winner sexually harassed her when she was a 17-year-old production assistant.

'As hard as it is I think I wanted to choose truth over shame,' said Thomas, her voice breaking with emotion.

Rossetter, who says the Rain Man star made her life hell when they were working together in a 1983 Broadway revival of the Arthur Miller play Death Of A Salesman, revealed how his relentless sexual harassment wore away on her.

'It eroded self confidence and my dignity and it was humiliating and demeaning,' said the actress, who was flanked by the other victims during the interview with Cynthia McFadden.

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Kathryn Rossetter branded Dustin Hoffman 'abusive' and a 'bully' during the first joint TV interview with two other women who accuse him of sexual misconduct

The actress was joined on NBC's Nightly News by Cori Thomas, who says Hoffman exposed himself to her when she was 16, and Anna Graham Hunter, who says the Oscar winner sexually harassed her when she was a 17-year-old production assistant

'He robbed me of the joy of that experience. So I've been lying for 34 years.

'People go, "How was it to work with Dustin?" So I tell the half truth; "As a actor, working with him, I owe him everything. I learned so much."

'And then I would stop. And there would always be knot in my stomach about the real truth was, which was that he was abusive and he was a bully.'

Rossetter said she'd been too terrified to report the sexual harassment she suffered during the play, including one harrowing moment where she claims he moved his hand up her thigh and 'tried to penetrate me with his fingers', because she didn't think anyone would believe her.

All three women have accused Dustin Hoffman (pictured) of sexual misconduct

'He was the most famous actor in the world, it was the top of his career,' she said. 'I was a nobody. No one was going to believe me.'  

'We have a culture of celebrity,' she added. 'Just because you’re good at sports or music or acting doesn't mean that you're a completely integrated fabulous human being. Your humanity is different than your work.'

The actress said that was what made Hoffman's behavior offstage so shocking. The actor is renowned for his brilliant portrayal of vulnerable, hugely sympathetic characters.

Be it the nervous young college graduate snared by the rapacious older woman in The Graduate, the autistic savant in Rain Man or done up in drag and batting off the attentions of lecherous men in Tootsie, he rarely takes a role that doesn’t invite audiences to root for the ‘little guy’.

'That might be part of his tragedy,' she added. 'He brings so much humanity to his work.

'But he hasn’t quite got it completely his life.'

The trio are among a number of women who have accused The Graduate star of groping and abusing them.

Hoffman, 80, has yet personally to respond, although his lawyer has dismissed the allegations as ‘defamatory falsehoods’. 

Rossetter, who says the Rain Man star made her life hell when they were working together in a 1983 Broadway revival of the Arthur Miller play Death Of A Salesman, revealed how his relentless sexual harassment wore away on her

Yet the stories have been piling up – and getting increasingly more damaging – since last month, when he was accused of sexually harassing then 17-year-old production assistant Hunter.

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and #MeToo campaign, Hunter penned an essay for the Hollywood Reporter, where she claimed that Hoffman repeatedly groped and harassed her when she was working on the Death of a Salesman movie.

She said the ‘openly flirtatious’ actor consistently behaved inappropriately towards her – asking for foot massages, grabbing her buttocks and making lewd, aggressive jokes. Although she concluded that ‘he was a predator, I was a child’, she admitted she had liked him.

On NBC Nightly News on Monday, Hunter recalled one moment when she says Hoffman humiliated her by making a sexually suggestive breakfast order. 

'He just stared at me and everyone burst out laughing and I backed out, went to the bathroom and cried', she said.

‘I am sorry,’ the actor, well-known for his liberal views, said at the time, insisting he had the ‘utmost respect for women’ and felt ‘terrible for anything I might have done’. It was not, he added, ‘reflective of who I am’.  

Since then, more women have come forward to claim they were harassed by Hoffman as well, in incidents dating back to the 1970s

No other Hollywood star has proved quite so brilliant at playing vulnerable, hugely sympathetic characters as Dustin Hoffman. Sadly, screen roles can be deceptive.

Rossetter says Hoffman would grope her back stage between scenes and wouldn't heed her demands that he stop. The two are pictured above acting in the TV movie of Death of a Salesman 

The most detailed account of Hoffman’s alleged sexual misconduct comes from Rossetter. She says she caught his eye when she was an inexperienced young actress auditioning for a part in a 1983 Broadway revival of the Arthur Miller play Death Of A Salesman.

She was ‘dumbstruck’ to land the part of the mistress of Hoffman’s character, on stage eight times a week with him. Hoffman took her to his home to meet Lisa Hoffman, his then wife and mother of their four children.

However, she says a campaign of relentless sexual harassment started three days into rehearsals when he asked her to stop at his hotel room after lunch together.

Why he needed a hotel room when he lived only a mile from the theater quickly became clear, she said, as he pulled off his shirt and requested a back rub on his bed. She initially thought he was ‘method acting’ by recreating their on-stage affair but soon discovered it was ‘the beginning of what was to become a horrific, demoralizing and abusive experience at the hands (literally) of one of my acting idols’.

Rossetter, now 66, claims Hoffman would even grope her off stage between their scenes. ‘One night in Chicago, I felt his hand up under my slip on the inside of my thighs,’ she says. ‘I was completely surprised and tried to bat him away.’

His hands, on occasions, went even further and she recalls how ‘night after night’ she went home and cried. She says he also enjoyed groping her breasts when they posed for photos together, taking his hand away at the last minute, except on one occasion – a photo of which has now been published – when he was too slow and was caught in the act.

Hoffman is now cast as a predatory monster, submerged under a stream of sordid allegations of sexual misconduct

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

Making matters worse, she says, their colleagues on the production were not just turning a blind eye but actively colluding with his behavior. She recalled how in a ‘sickening’ incident backstage, Hoffman once pulled her slip over her head to expose her breasts in front of a group of male crew members who, she later discovered, had been promised a ‘surprise’ by the actor.

She also said Hoffman’s dresser repeatedly summoned her to his dressing room to massage the star’s feet, standing guard outside the door to ensure they weren’t disturbed.

When Rossetter explained what had happened to ‘theater professionals’, they warned her she risked ruining her career if she spoke out against such a powerful actor.

Although Hoffman has not responded directly to Miss Rossetter’s claims, he has produced half a dozen people in the production who questioned her account.

Thomas, a former classmate of Hoffman’s daughter Karina, was only 16 when, she says, he exposed himself to her in a hotel room. 

Cori Thomas (left) was just 16 when she met Dustin Hoffman (right) who she claims exposed himself to her

Miss Thomas, the daughter of the former Liberian ambassador to the UN and now a playwright, recalled how the two girls and the actor spent a pleasant day together in New York in 1980.

Karina’s mother was divorced from Hoffman and he was staying in a hotel, where the trio dined before they went to his room for Thomas to wait for her parents to pick her up. 

But when Karina went home to do her homework, Hoffman allegedly used the moment to expose himself to her.

She told Variety the star, who she very much admired at the time, had taken a shower while she waited.

‘He came out of the bathroom with a towel at first wrapped around him, which he dropped,’ she told Variety. ‘He was standing there naked. I think I almost collapsed. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified. I didn’t know what to do.’

Hoffman, she claims, ‘milked’ her extreme discomfort. She claimed the actor, then 42, eventually put on a bathrobe, sat on his bed and asked her to massage his feet. 

Thomas, then an aspiring actress who’d idolized the actor, said she felt disgusted, but too intimidated to refuse.

Another alleged victim, who used the pseudonym Carolyn, says she was a 21-year-old tour guide in Washington in 1975 when Hoffman, in town to film the Watergate thriller All The President’s Men, asked her to spend the evening with him

As she complied, Hoffman even rang another woman and boasted to her that ‘I’ve got a pretty girl massaging my feet’, it is claimed.

She was ‘saved’ by the arrival of her mother, who was suspicious about her daughter being alone with Hoffman in his room.

In any case, nothing was done until seven years later when Thomas confided to friends.

A slew of other women have also come forward to accuse Hoffman of sexual assault and harassment.  

Melissa Kester, was 20 when she says she was sexually assaulted by Hoffman in a recording booth, while her oblivious boyfriend was just a few feet away on the other side of the glass, while they were working on the musical soundtrack for the 1987 comedy adventure film Ishtar.

‘He literally just stuck his fingers down my pants. I just stood there. I just froze in the situation like “Oh my god, what is happening?”' 

Desperate not to react for fear of alerting her boyfriend, she eventually managed to move away.

Cori Thomas, a former classmate of Hoffman’s daughter Karina, was only 16 when, she says, he exposed himself to her in a hotel room

‘He kind of laughed. 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.’

Wendy Riss Gatsiounis, a TV writer and producer, claimed that, when she was in her 20s, Hoffman rejected her script when she refused to go to a hotel with him. She said the experience was ‘a source of torment’ and added: ‘He had been my hero.’ 

An anonymous accuser, then 22, claims she was assaulted in the same way by Hoffman in the back of car, after she accepted a lift home with him and several colleagues. 

The woman says Hoffman then gave her $20 and asked her to join him at his flat. When she arrived, they had sex – an encounter which, given the ‘fugue state’ in which he had put her, she says was not fully consensual.

A woman identified only as Pauline told the Hollywood Reporter magazine that she was just 15 and Hoffman aged 36 when he lured her to his New York home in 1973. The bait was to see his pet puppy, she says.

When they got there, he allegedly asked her: ‘Do you want to see something else?’, unzipped his trousers and exposed himself. ‘I didn’t know what to say, what to do,’ she said. She claims Hoffman told her: ‘I’ll be finished soon’ and later walked her to a taxi. ‘I was just crying, it was so embarrassing,’ she says.

Another alleged victim, Carolyn, says she was a 21-year-old tour guide in Washington D.C. in 1975 when she met Hoffman, in town to film the Watergate thriller All The President’s Men. 

She claims she agreed to go to his hotel room, but when she went to leave, he allegedly told her: ‘Go home? You don’t think you’re getting out of here without having sex, do you?’

She claims Hoffman blocked the doorway and insisted she choose between two sex acts. Afterwards, he offered her $20 for a taxi home, later calling her mother asking to take her out for dinner.