Director James Toback denied sexual harassment allegations made by Julianne Moore, Selma Blair and others in an angry rant to Rolling Stone on Friday, October 27.
“I’ve struggled seriously to make movies with very little money, that I write, that I direct, that mean my life to me. The idea that I would offer a part to anyone for any other reason than that he or she was gonna be the best of anyone I could find is so disgusting to me,” he told the magazine. “And anyone who says it is a lying c–ksucker or c–t or both. Can I be any clearer than that?”
“Anyone who says that, I just want to spit in his or her f–king face,” the Black and White director continued, saying that he was sitting with Sienna Miller who starred in his latest film, The Private Life of a Modern Woman. “No one who’s ever worked with me would ever say anything like that. No one.”
In a story published by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, October 22, more than 30 women accused the director of sexual harassment, which he denied. Several of the women said he approached them on the streets of NYC, offering them a part in an upcoming movie before making an unwanted sexual advance.
In a follow-up story, the Times claimed that an additional 200 women had come forward to detail similar encounters with the Oscar-nominated writer.
“… add one more. Exact same playbook by James Toback when I encountered him near Central Park, Today anchor Natalie Morales tweeted on Tuesday, October 24.
“In all honesty, I thought he was just a creep hitting on me with the oldest line in the book,” the 45-year-old told the Times.
Moore, 56, also detailed a similar incident, tweeting on Tuesday that Toback “approached me in the 80’s on Columbus Ave with the same language – wanted me to audition, come to his apt,” she wrote. ” I refused. One month later he did it again with the EXACT same language. I said don’t u remember u did this before?”
In an interview with Vanity Fair on Thursday, October 26, actresses Blair and Rachel McAdams recounted their experiences with the 72-year-old director.
Blair, 45, claimed that she met Toback in his hotel room at his insistence and told her that she had to remove her clothes so he could see how her body moved.
“I told him I was uncomfortable. But he continued to coax me — saying that this was in no way a come-on. This was part of training,” the Legally Blonde actress said. “I was so private about my body. I do remember looking down at the script and seeing my bare chest and not being able to focus on a thing but the words and my face being so hot and puffy and feeling so ashamed.”
She claimed he then asked her to have sexual relations and when she refused, he blocked the door. She ended up complying, letting him rub himself against her leg, so that she could get out of there “without being raped.”
The Notebook star told Vanity Fair she was just 21 when she was invited to come back to his hotel room to discuss a role in his film Harvard Man.
“Pretty quickly the conversation turned quite sexual,” McAdams alleged.”He said, ‘You know, I just have to tell you. I have masturbated countless times today thinking about you since we met at your audition.'”
The Mean Girls star was eventually able to excuse herself from the room.
“I was very lucky that he didn’t actually physically assault me in any way,” the 38-year-old said. “Sexual harassment is so pervasive, many women seem to have their own story. I just think there is an ‘anything goes’ [attitude] in Hollywood that gets taken too far. And there is a sense that you don’t have to be responsible for your actions — there is just no limit to what you can be subjected to. This has to stop. We need to start acknowledging what an epidemic this is, and what a deep-seated problem this is.”
The claims against Toback come in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal that saw the Hollywood producer fired from his own studio after the New York Times published an expose earlier this month detailing three decades of sexual harassment and assault allegations.
