TV personality John Oliver has hijacked a Q&A to challenge Dustin Hoffman on his response to the sexual harassment allegations brought against him in October.
The moment came during an anniversary screening of 1997 film Wag the Dog in New York, as Hoffman sat alongside friend and co-star Robert de Niro, director Barry Levinson and producer Jane Rosenthal.
Last Week Tonight host Oliver quizzed the actor on claims that he groped and made inappropriate comments towards Anna Graham Hunter, an intern on the set of 1985's Death of a Salesman.
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Hoffman rebuffed the allegations, but was then pressed on the apology he made to Ms Graham Hunter, in which he claimed the incidents were not a good reflection of the type of person he is.
"I'm not the moral arbiter of anything, but 'it's not reflective of who I am' - it's that kind of response to this stuff that pisses me off," Oliver said.
"Because it is reflective of who you were. If you've given no evidence to show that it didn't happen, then there was a period in time in which you were creepy around women.
"It feels like a cop-out to say, 'No this isn't me'."
Later on in the squabble, footage of which was supplied to The Washington Post, Hoffman then challenges Oliver on why he believed the accuser.
"Do you believe this stuff you read?" he asked.
"Yes, because there's no point in her lying," Oliver replied.
"Well, there's a point in her not bringing it up for 40 years," Hoffman said, to audible groans from Oliver and a number of audience members.
At one point Rosenthal spoke up in an effort to change the subject after she'd sat silently for much of the Q&A, according to The Washington Post.
"It wasn't produced by Weinstein or Miramax... Kevin Spacey wasn't starring in it," she said of the film. "Let's look at real sexual criminal predators."
"That's a low bar," he fired back.
Hoffman is one of a swathe of celebrities to have been accused of sexual misconduct in the months after an exposé into the alleged sexual misconduct of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Newshub.
