Warren Beatty accused of coercing sex with minor in 1973

A Louisiana woman is suing a man fitting the description of film star Warren Beatty, alleging "sexual abuse and assault" in 1973 when she was 14 years old.

In a summons and complaint filed Monday in California Superior Court, Los Angeles County, and obtained by Newsday, Kristina Charlotte Hirsch describes the otherwise unnamed "Defendant Doe" as having "acted in television and several Hollywood films, including portraying Clyde in 'Bonnie and Clyde,' a major box-office success that earned Defendant Doe an Academy Award nomination for best actor."

Beatty, 85, starred as Depression-era outlaw Clyde Barrow in director Arthur Penn's 1967 crime classic, opposite Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker. Beatty earned Academy Award nominations for best actor and, as producer of the film, best picture. He went on to win a best director Oscar for the historical drama "Reds" (1981), and an honorary 1999 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

Hirsch's complaint states she "is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, sexual battery, assault, molestation and abuse at the hands of Defendant Doe. When Plaintiff Hirsch was just a 14-year-old child, Defendant Doe 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 months in the State of California."

As a result, the lawsuit says, Hirsch "has suffered severe emotional, physical and psychological distress, including humiliation, shame, and guilt."

She is suing under a California law amended in 2019 to allow sexual assault accusations otherwise beyond the statute of limitations to be filed between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2022, colloquially referred to as a "lookback window."

Beatty's representative did not respond to a Newsday request for comment. Hirsch's attorney, Mike Reck, told Newsday in an email, "Right now, we are letting the Complaint speak for itself."

Hirsch and Beatty met in "approximately early 1973" on the set of a movie he was shooting, the lawsuit states. Beatty's first film since 1971 was the conspiracy thriller "The Parallax View" (1974), followed by "Shampoo" and "The Fortune" in 1975. The star would have been in his mid-30s.

"Plaintiff’s neighbor brought Plaintiff to the movie set where she [the neighbor] was working at the time," the suit describes. "Defendant Doe paid undue attention to the young Plaintiff, 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 … where he was living at the time. Plaintiff was thrilled by the attention and invitation" and "did as the movie star instructed her to," contacting him "soon after their first meeting."

Over the course of 1973, the suit states, Doe called her "on numerous occasions and summoned the teenager to the hotel where he was living to spend time with him." They went on car rides, he "offered to help her with her homework," spoke about sexual matters with her and otherwise groomed her, Hirsch alleges, until he "finally coerced sexual intercourse with the minor child."

She asks for "exemplary and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial."

Beatty married actor Annette Bening in 1992. He and the four-time Academy Award nominee have four adult children.