Eliza Dushku has been in the acting business for a long time. She'd already appeared in a couple of movies as a child actress before she booked a gig on the movie True Lies in 1994. At the time, she was 12 years old, and the actress recently recounted that her experience on set wasn't exactly the stuff of Hollywood dreams. Instead, she says she was working on the movie when the stunt coordinator, Joel Kramer, with full permission from her parents, brought her back to his hotel room on the pretense of using the hotel's pool.
She reports she went up to his room, where they were supposed to eat sushi---her first sushi meal, in fact. Instead, she says he put the movie Coneheads onto the TV, cranked up the air conditioner and disappeared into the bathroom. When he re-emerged, she says he was naked. But that wasn't the worst of what was to come. She noted,
I remember how he laid me down on the bed, wrapped me with his gigantic writhing body, and rubbed all over me. He spoke these words: 'You're not going to sleep on me now sweetie, stop pretending you're sleeping,' as he rubbed harder and faster against my catatonic body. When he was 'finished', he suggested, 'I think we should be careful...,' [about telling anyone] he meant. I was 12, he was 36.
In the aftermath of the incident, he reportedly took her home in a taxi, where she says he became aroused again. In the time following, she continued to work on True Lies, although she says Joel Kramer grew distant. She says she told her parents, her brother and two other adults about what had happened, but in 1994 no one seemed to know how to cope with what had happened or have a clear game plan about what to do.
She says she decided to speak out now because she felt the time is right, as she would like to liken herself to some of her most popular characters like Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Faith, Bring it On's Missy and Dollhouse's Echo.
Hollywood has been very good to me in many ways. Nevertheless, Hollywood also failed to protect me, a child actress. I like to think of myself as a tough Boston chick, in many ways I suppose not unlike Faith, Missy, or Echo. Through the years, brave fans have regularly shared with me how some of my characters have given them the conviction to stand up to their abusers. Now it is you who give me strength and conviction. I hope that speaking out will help other victims and protect against future abuse.
Joel Kramer is still working in the industry, most recently working as a stunt coordinator on Blade Runner 2049. If you'd like to read the entire post from the actress you can head over to Facebook, where her story is shared in full.
