Actor Dustin Hoffman says his film Tootsie is proof that he respects women. The 80-year-old actor, who was accused by Anna Graham Hunter, an intern on his movie Death of a Salesman, of sexually harassing her on the set 32 years ago, defended himself during a discussion with TV talk show host John Oliver.

According to The Washington Post, Hoffman referenced Tootsie as he said: “I would not have made that movie if I didn’t have an incredible respect for women,” Hoffman said. “The theme of the movie is (my character) became a better man by having been a woman.”

In the 1982 film, Hoffman stars as a struggling New York actor who successfully masquerades as a middle-aged
actress to win a part on a hit soap opera.

The actor said that when he was dressed as a woman, he found that some of the men on set ignored him and that gave him an insight into what it was like to be a woman. “I said when I came home to my wife that I never realised men were that were brutal, that men are that obvious. They didn’t find me attractive and they just erased me... What makes me sad is that I grew up in an environment in which we were taught to want the girls on the covers of magazines, the models, and I said to my wife ‘Look at how many interesting women I passed up... look at how many women were erased by me because of the generation I was born’. That was a very strong reason for me wanting to make that movie,” he said.

Hoffman’s comments came at a panel discussion with fellow actor Robert De Niro and Oliver about the making of the 1997 political satire Wag the Dog and its significance in the Trump presidential era. Instead, the discussion became an inquisition on the allegations of sexual misconduct and Oliver grilled Hoffman over Hunter’s allegation.

“This is something we’re going to have to talk about because … it’s hanging in the air,” said Oliver, the host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight.

The discussion didn’t address other claims made about Hoffman, one of them by his Kramer vs. Kramer co-star Meryl Streep.

In a 1979 interview to Time magazine, Streep described auditioning for a play Hoffman had directed several years earlier. During the audition, which was the first time they met, Hoffman put a hand on her breast, according to Slate.