Timothy Hutton is vigorously denying claims that he raped a teenager in 1983, saying he may file a defamation lawsuit soon against his accuser and the publication that detailed her allegations.

“For the past two-and-a-half years, I have been the target of multiple extortion attempts by a woman named Sera Dale Johnston to extract millions of dollars from me,” the star of Fox’s Almost Family told Deadline on Monday after reports of the decades-old claims were published. “She threatened that if I did not meet her demands, she would go to the press with a false allegation that I sexually assaulted her 37 years ago in Canada,” Hutton added.

“I never assaulted Ms. Johnston,” the actor said.

“Today, BuzzFeed chose to publish Ms. Johnston’s false story,” the Oscar-winning Ordinary People actor went on to say about the claim of him sexually assaulting the then 14-year-old in a Vancouver hotel room...