Jeremy Piven denies groping Entourage actress

Jeremy Piven has strongly denied groping a background actress on the set of Entourage in 2009.

The actor, who has already been hit with allegations of sexual harassment and assault in the scandal sweeping Hollywood, has been accused of groping Anastasia Taneie when she was a 23-year-old extra on his TV show Entourage in April 2009.

She claims they got talking during a filming break on location at a Los Angeles theater and they went off together when the actor suggested he and his manager wanted to talk to her about something. But when they were alone in a dark hallway, he allegedly grabbed her, pushed her up against a wall and groped her breasts and genitals. She alleged that he only stopped when an assistant director walked by.

"I was scared at the time nobody was going to believe me. I didn't want to make a scene. I just wanted to go home," she told BuzzFeed News. "It was the most horrible thing I've ever experienced."

Piven has denied the claim through his lawyers, saying, "Let me be absolutely clear, this simply did not happen. I would never force myself on a woman. I cannot speak as to why a person would create a story like this."

He is also threatening to pursue legal action and has demanded his accusers take a polygraph test, like he did on 13 November (17) in a bid to prove his innocence.

He was asked questions about allegations by Ariane Bellamar, who claimed he touched her inappropriately on the set of Entourage and at a Playboy Mansion party, advertising executive Tiffany Bacon Scourby, who accused him of exposing himself and ejaculating over her in his New York hotel room in 2003, and Amy Meador, who claims Piven forced himself on her after he came round her then-home in Los Angeles in 1995.

He denied all the claims during the session. According to The Blast, the lie detector examiner said Piven "showed no reactions indicative of deception" and therefore passed the test.