Actor and Oscar-winning director Warren Beatty allegedly used his “status” and “power” to coerce an underage girl into sexual encounters nearly five decades ago, a new lawsuit claims.
The accuser, Kristina Charlotte Hirsch, asserts the incidents occurred in 1973 when she was 14 or 15 and when Beatty was in his mid-30s, according to the lawsuit obtained by Variety.
Hirsch doesn’t name Beatty in the Los Angeles lawsuit, which she filed Monday, and instead refers to her alleged abuser as an actor who portrayed Clyde in “Bonnie and Clyde.” Beatty famously played the role in the 1967 crime drama.
She experienced “severe emotional, physical and psychological distress” after the star “used his role, status, and power as a well-known Hollywood Star to gain access to, groom, manipulate, exploit, and coerce sexual contact from her over the course of several month,” the lawsuit alleges.
A legal representative for Beatty did not immediately respond to a Daily News request for comment.
Hirsch allegedly met Beatty on the Los Angeles-area set of a movie he was working on in 1973. She claims the actor “commented repeatedly on her looks, gave her his phone number, and instructed her to call him when she was near the hotel in Los Angeles County, California, where he was living at the time.”
She says she believed she was in a relationship with Beatty, whom she accuses in the lawsuit of coercing “oral sex, simulated sex and finally ... sexual intercourse.” The lawsuit seeks damages from the actor.
Beatty is a 14-time Oscar nominee, including for best actor in 1968 for “Bonnie and Clyde,” 1976 for “Shampoo,” 1982 for “Reds” and 1992 for “Bugsy.” He took home best director for “Reds,” his lone Academy Awards win.
The actor was known to run in the same circles as Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, who was charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s Los Angeles home in 1977. Polanski fled the United States ahead of his sentencing and has primarily lived in France in the decades since as an American fugitive.
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