Meryl Streep’s representative has issued a statement saying that claims in a resurfaced interview that Dustin Hoffman groped her during an audition in the 1970s are not an “accurate rendering of that meeting”.

The statement continued: “There was an offence and it is something for which Dustin apologised. And Meryl accepted that.”

The allegations were made in a Time magazine interview in 1979, published when Streep was promoting the film Kramer vs Kramer.

In the same week, two other women accused Hoffman of sexual harassment.

Streep and Hoffman worked together on several projects, including the 1979 movie.

Richard Fischoff, a film executive, told Vanity Fair that during a rehearsal for the film, Hoffman slapped Streep and taunted her about the death of her partner, John Cazale.

Author Michael Schulman, who interviewed numerous Kramer vs Kramer cast and crew members for his book Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep, reported that Hoffman “took pleasure in playing the bully” during rehearsals, leaving Streep “absolutely white”.

The claim in Time relates to an audition for Hoffman’s Broadway play All Over Town, which opened in 1974.

At the time of the alleged incident, Streep was 25.

Jeff Lenburg’s 2001 biography of Hoffman, Hollywood’s Antihero, confirms that Streep was in the play.