Hollywood legend, Dustin Hoffman has denied a string of sexual misconduct allegations in his new memoir, Look At Me.
The Kramer vs Kramer star denied these #MeToo allegations made against him by six young women during his heyday. Although despite denying these claims, Hoffman did admit in his book that he might have "made some women uncomfortable".
He wrote: "I'm sure it's true that in my life, especially forty years ago, I made some women uncomfortable. But "uncomfortable" is a subjective emotional state".
Hoffman continued: "What is crass and offensive to one person, another individual might find hilarious, or enlivening, or even sort of cozy".
The actor then referred to his "bawdy sense of humour", writing: "I don't even know why we apply "dirty" to anything sexual. As Lenny Bruce put it, "If God made the body, and the body is dirty, then the fault lies with the manufacturer." I'm out there. I love a so-called dirty joke".
"That's not the same thing as pressuring someone to do something they didn't want to do", he said. "So, when a reckoning started making its way around the internet, and tearing through Hollywood, I thought it was a very good thing. I knew by then that plenty of women had put up with way too much for way too long in my industry".
"Not for a second did I worry that anything negative would be said about me, because the idea of taking something from someone sexually that they didn't want to give... it's just not something I've ever done".
Elsewhere, Dustin Hoffman, who will not be reprising his role for Focker In Law later this month, said that his wife, Kisa Gottsegen, whom he has been married to for over 46 years, understands he questionable sense of humour.
He wrote that Lisa "fell in love with a guy ... who is obsessed with sex and is always looking for attention. Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me".
"It took me an embarrassingly long time to grasp that if I was flirting or my jokes were too dirty, people who were not my wife might think I was being inappropriate", he continued. "I know I'm harmless, she knows I'm harmless, but if you'd never met me before, would you know?".
Such allegations include a wide range of alleged offences committed by Hoffman, from sexual harassment to exposing himself to a minor for six different women, which predate the #MeToo movement, which he described as "bewildering".
In October 2017, Dustin Hoffman apologised to Anna Graham-Hunter, a former production assistant who claimed she was sexually harassed by Hoffman on set of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in 1985. At the time, Hoffman was in his mid 40s, while Graham-Hunter was just 17 years old.
She claimed that Hoffman told her he wanted "soft boiled clitoris" for breakfast, and also alleged that he told others on the set that he wanted to feast on her breasts.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter at the time, Anna described Hoffman as "openly flirtatious", claiming that he had grabbed her "ass", and "talked about sex to me in front of me".
In a statement at the time, Hoffman claimed that he had "the utmost respect for women", and that he regretted "anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation", before apologising.
Another woman, a screenwriter and playwright, Wendy Riss Gatsiounis had told Variety that Hoffman had sexually propositioned her during the second of two meetings which had been fixed to discuss the film adaption of her play, A Darker Purpise.
She said she met Hoffman in 1991, when she was in her early 20s, and he was 53.
Ms Gatsiounis alleged that Hoffman had asked if she had ever been intimate with someone over the age of 40, before suggesting that she accompanied him to a nearby hotel, and that the actor later backed out of the project when she refused to go with him to this hotel.
Look At Me was released yesterday via Simon & Schuster.
