Tom Sizemore Was Removed From Movie Set for Allegedly Violating 11-Year Old Girl
A dozen cast and crewmembers tell THR that the actor was sent home after the girl told her parents about the incident.
Actor Tom Sizemore was told to leave a Utah film set in 2003 after an 11-year-old actress told her mother that he had touched her genitals, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Months later, he returned for reshoots in Malibu after her parents declined to press charges. The incident has never been revealed publicly.
When contacted, the now 26-year-old former actress, whom THR is not identifying at her request, declined to address the matter except to note that she's recently hired a lawyer to explore legal action against the actor as well as her parents. Sizemore declined to address the situation. "Our position is 'no comment,'" says his agent Stephen Rice.
THR spoke to a dozen people involved with the production of the film, a crime thriller called Born Killers (shot as Piggy Banks). They confirmed Sizemore was sent home over the alleged incident. According to these cast- and crewmembers, rumors swirled and emotions rose on set over what had allegedly transpired.
Sizemore, notorious for his long rap sheet that includes charges of drug use and battery against women, has not previously been accused of molestation. An actor with a tough-guy image then at the height of his scandal-driven infamy, when the Utah incident occurred he'd recently been convicted of physically abusing and harassing his ex-girlfriend, the former "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss.
Sizemore is said to have denied the young actress' claim as soon as he was confronted with it. His management firm Untitled and talent agency CAA quietly dropped him shortly afterward. He's currently repped by the boutique firm Pantheon.
​Cast- and crewmembers, inspired by the nascent movement toward industry transparency in the post-Harvey Weinstein era, explain that the incident took place near the end of production on Born Killers (not to be confused with Oliver Stone's earlier Natural Born Killers, which Sizemore also appeared in). It was during a second-unit still portrait session, to capture photos of Sizemore's character with his abandoned wife and daughter. The imagery would serve as a plot device in the $5 million film, which was released by Lionsgate in 2005. The film centers on two immoral brothers on a crime spree. (Sizemore played the dissolute father who raised them.)
​The roughly half-hour session required the young actress, who had a small role in the production, to be seated on Sizemore's lap in a holiday tableau. This is when Sizemore allegedly either rubbed his finger against the girl's vagina or inserted it inside. Production manager Cassidy Lunnen recalls that "the girl was so young it was unclear to her and [later] her parents what had actually taken place and if it was intentional or not."
During one setup, which required just the two of them, Robyn Adamson, who portrayed the wife, stood away, near the photographer. She recalls of the girl, who was wearing a flannel nightgown: "At one point her eyes got just huge, like she could've vomited. I was watching her. She soon reintegrated and kept going, although she had trouble taking direction. Later, when I was told about what happened, I knew exactly what it was."
Catrine McGregor, the casting director who hired the young actress, fielded a call from the actress' agent the next day, explaining that the girl had informed her mother that she'd been inappropriately touched. "The mother noticed that her daughter was unusually quiet and told her she was going to take her to this swimming place that was the little girl's favorite thing," says McGregor, a four-decade veteran in the business, who notes that she subsequently filed a complaint with SAG's legal department and advocated for Sizemore's immediate dismissal from the project. (SAG declined to comment.) "When the girl put on her bathing suit, she told her mother that it reminded her of the day before, in an upsetting way — that the bathing suit's contact against her felt like what happened when the man had put his finger inside her," as McGregor understood the events on-set.
Word spread quickly. "It filtered down to the crew," says Roi Maufas, who worked as a production assistant. "The little girl said what she said and we all thought, 'That fucking sleazebag.' There was never any doubt. He was this guy who was already known for making inappropriate comments, being drunk, being high. We're talking about consistent behavior, just being 'Tom Sizemore' on set every day. Then this happens. Guys reached for hammers. [Producer James R. Rosenthal, who died in 2011], who was livid himself, had to stop a group of us from going to visit Mr. Sizemore to kick the guy's ass."
In interviews, the film's producers Jai Stefan, Michael Manshel and Gus Spoliansky note that they removed Sizemore from set as soon as they heard about the assertion, reviewed the photographs from the portrait session but found them to be inconclusive evidence and sought out the parents to encourage them to engage law enforcement if they felt compelled to do so. Stefan, who along with the others describes being heavily affected by the actress' claim ("I was like, 'Did that just happen on my watch?' I started crying"), recalls the parents "not wanting the little girl being taken off the movie. We said we can remove her, remove him, remove both."
"They did talk to the police but didn't press charges," says Manshel adding: "We also talked to Tom at the time, and told him everything that had been told to us, and he said: 'I've done a lot of awful things, and I'd never do anything with kids.' We considered whether we had some responsibility to him to not pass judgment on him."
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