Eliza Dushku’s ‘True Lies’ Co-Star Jamie Lee Curtis Responds to Assault Allegations

Jamie Lee Curtis, who played Eliza Dushku‘s mother in True Lies, said she is “shocked and saddened” after Dushku shared her account of allegedly being molested by the film’s stunt coordinator.

In an essay for the HuffPost, Curtis said Dushku “shared that story with me privately a few years ago,” adding, “I was shocked and saddened then and still am today.”

“Eliza’s story has now awakened us from our denial slumber to a new, horrific reality. The abuse of children,” she wrote.

The 59-year-old Curtis wrote that she has worked with a number of child actors throughout her life. She noted that they are often asked to do things in films that only adults would do, with hundreds of people older than them watching their every move.

“Are we really friends? Are we work mates? Children are not mature enough to recognize that subtle difference,” Curtis wrote. “I was so conscious of my adult self and foibles that I implemented the use of a swear can on the set of My Girl. I knew that we had children present and that adult language was inappropriate. Naturally, I was the biggest contributor to the can and handed Macaulay [Culkin] and Anna [Chlumsky] the lucrative contents on their last day.”

Although there are rules meant to protect children on movie sets, Curtis noted that many of them are broken.

“We’ve recently heard reports of agents abusing their young actor clients and now this story from Miss Dushku. What compounds the difficulty here is that the stunt coordinator in question was literally in charge of our lives, our safety,” Curtis noted. “Stunts always require an enormous amount of trust and on that movie in particular we all were often suspended by wires and harnesses, very high in the air. In my case, I was suspended under a helicopter by a wire, holding onto the hand of the man who is now being accused of abuse.”

Curtis called on all actors and crew to “take some responsibility that the loose and relaxed camaraderie that we share with our young performers has carried with it a misguided assumption that they are adults in an adult world, capable of making adult choices.”

In the end, the actress called what allegedly happened to Dushku a “terrible, terrible thing to learn about and have to reconcile.”

On Saturday, Dushku told her story publicly for the first time, posting a lengthy statement on Facebook. She claimed that stunt coordinator Joel Kramer molested her in a Maimi hotel room when she was 12 years old, during production on True Lies. Kramer has denied the allegations.

Comedian Tom Arnold, who co-starred in True Lies, said he believes Dushku. The story was also corroborated by her on-set guardian, Sue Booth-Forbes. James Cameron, who directed the film, said he hadn’t heard about the allegations until Saturday, but praised Dushku as “very brave” for coming forward.

“Had I known about it, there would’ve been no mercy,” Cameron told reporters Saturday afternoon.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also starred in True Lies, has not commented yet.