In 2027 it will be 60 years since The Graduate made Dustin Hoffman a star. Since then, few careers are comparable to his. That brilliant beginning was the beginning of the solid career of one of the most important actors in history. Today, this 89-year-old Californian has meticulously reviewed his career to write his memoirs, Look at Me—they will be published in the United States on November 11—and he claims to look at his younger self with pride. "I always had doubts about some of my performances, but watching the movies again, I thought, 'That's pretty good. If I saw it on someone else, I'd think so," he says. He adds: “Remembering younger versions of myself is like seeing another person at that time in my life.”
At first no one bet on him. When he told his family that he wanted to be an actor, he didn't receive much support: his Aunt Pearl told him directly that he wasn't handsome enough. Possibly what he also meant was that he was not tall enough: leading men of his generation like Warren Beatty and Sidney Poitier were close to two meters. But Hoffman, with his 1.65 meters and his appearance like a scared little bird, helped redefine the image of the heartthrob when he became a fundamental icon of that movement they called New Hollywood. A cinematographic revolution that emerged in 1967 that transformed the way of film-making in the United States. Until then, absolute control of the industry was held by the big studios, which lost millions of dollars financing traditional musicals with aging leading men that young people no longer wanted to see. Salvation emerged in the form of a new generation of young directors, influenced by European auteur cinema: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Mike Nichols, who was 37 years old when he directed The Graduate (1967).
The film starred an unknown 30-year-old Hoffman. Until then he had worked mostly on Broadway and during his screen test he was so nervous that he forgot his lines. But his portrayal of Benjamin Braddock, a young man just out of college seduced by the wife of his father's partner, demonstrated a vulnerability, complexity and contradictory appeal that distanced him from the image of the perfect movie star of previous decades. And it was tremendously seductive for a new generation of viewers.
That success marked the path for him. Hoffman continued to bet on those neurotic and working-class antiheroes, or at least with problems typical of the common man. In an uninterrupted concatenation of memorable performances, Midnight Cowboy (1969), Little Big Man (1970), Straw Dogs (1971), Papillon (1973), Lenny (1974), All the President's Men (1976), Marathon Man (1976), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Tootsie (1983) and Rainman (1988) followed one another. In 20 years, he received six Oscar nominations. He won two.
Hoffman greatly influenced the world of cinema, but never before had he told the most fascinating story of his six-decade career: his own. Writing his memoirs was not an easy task. While he sat down to reminisce about his life, some of his close friends died. Among them Robert Redford, with whom he co-starred in All the President's Men, a classic political thriller about Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal that remains one of the best films about journalism ever made. “His death was a shock,” Hoffman recalls. "While I was writing the book, two other old friends also died, Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall, with whom I lived in New York when we were in our twenties and beginning our acting careers. It's strange to be the last of the three alive."
I knew Gene Hackman since the beginning of time: they were both born in California and were students at the same acting school in Pasadena. Gene, who had been a Marine, was 26 years old, Dustin was 19. They say they became close because their classmates voted them “the two students least likely to succeed.” Hackman, expelled from that academy after receiving the worst grades ever achieved by a student, was the first to move to New York to try his luck on Broadway. Hoffman followed two years later, moving into his friend's tiny apartment. A few weeks later, Hackman, fed up with an impossible coexistence, sent him to live with another beginner who had a slightly larger house: Robert Duvall.
Long before he sat down to write about himself, Hoffman dedicated his life to trying to figure out others. His performances became legendary for the deep emotional understanding that underpinned them. Whether it was months of researching his roles, questioning every line of dialogue to find his own emotional truth and logical reasoning, or making an effort to dive deep into his characters' psychology, Hoffman earned a reputation as one of the most meticulous actors in Hollywood. Director Sydney Pollack—who directed Tootsie, in which Hoffman plays an actor who can't find work until he disguises himself as a woman so he can host a television show—described the actor and his rigorous process as "impossible," before adding: "Dustin asked a hundred questions. Ninety-nine of them were great."
It was that same instinct—to delve deeply into each character's feelings—that ended up shaping the way Hoffman approached his own memories. “My mind wanders and my feelings accompany me on the journey,” he says of the process of writing his memoirs. "The book is structured thematically rather than chronologically, because that's how I remember my life and the films I've been in. When you reach your eighties, your memories stop being a linear progression... All the people you've been and all the work you've done become a mosaic in your mind, and the mosaics move. It sounds a little psychedelic. But that's what being eighty-nine is like, at least for me."
Unsurprisingly given his perfectionism, Hoffman applied the same rigor to his own past when he set out to write, which is why he rewatched every single film in which he has acted. The experience took him by surprise. “Honestly, I was surprised at how good a lot of them are,” he admits. "For example, about Smokescreen [the 1997 film that earned him his last Oscar nomination to date], I thought: what more could you ask for in a movie? The same goes for All the President's Men, which is still full of suspense. I think it holds up very well."
Specific stories about those films — and about the co-stars who became some of his closest friends — came back to Hoffman during the writing process. Regarding the aforementioned classic about the Nixon investigation, Hoffman says: "Robert Redford had a great idea for that film, in which we played Woodward and Bernstein, the journalists who uncovered the Watergate case in the Washington Post: that we both learned each other's lines, as well as our own. That way we could talk at the same time, say the same thing, surprise each other and the other actors in the film, without worrying about who had said what. And it worked. We were like a single organism."
It's hard to imagine reliving as many moments of one's life as Hoffman did when he revisited his filmography. For more than 99.9% of human history, no one was able to relive their past through photographs, much less through moving images. Until very recently, only actors and certain public figures regularly faced cameras, creating a visual record of their lives over decades. Because, although the movie stars played characters, their performances were intertwined with real memories and, indeed, their own lives. In all of these films, the friendships forged between co-stars are present, the pain they carried with them to the filming set and the love stories that began or ended during a production. Nowadays, however, almost everyone creates an archive of their own life with their smartphones and social networks, which turns the great revision of our own lives, which was previously reserved for film actors, into an experience that any of us will have to face. In Hoffman's case, there were times when he barely recognized the person he saw. “While watching all the movies I thought: 'But who made this?'” he jokes. "The ones I was good at, I don't know what I did or how I did it. I feel like there was a completely different person on the screen."
And it's possibly true, because since those films were made, Hoffman has been a husband and father—he's been married twice and has six children; director – in 2012 he made his debut behind the camera with El quartet – and now, finally, writer. But the Hollywood icon has not yet retired from the stage. Earlier this year he starred in the heist thriller Tuner, from director Daniel Roher—who won the Oscar for Navalny—in which he played Harry Horowitz, an elderly piano tuner and father figure to a talented pianist with hyperacusis (it's inevitable to think of Hoffman's role as a father figure to all actors and moviegoers when watching his performance, as well as his own artistic intensity). About how he approached this role, Hoffman says: "I always start by trying to find common ground between 'my character' and me. I underline the quotes because I try to find in who I play a version or a vestige of myself. This way I don't think so much about the result, but rather about being present and being authentic."
That is, in many ways, the philosophy that has defined his entire career. We have always seen a lot of Hoffman himself reflected in his famous characters. But interpretation allows an individual to express or reveal himself in indirect ways. A memoir, on the other hand, unmasks the artist, forcing him to show himself (although, in this case, with the help of Ariel Levy, editor of The New Yorker, who edited and co-wrote the book). Hoffman's memoir delves into tremendously personal issues, including the relationship between success and happiness, both experienced intensely at different times throughout his extraordinary life.
After 89 years—and after finally turning his gaze inward—the distinction has become startlingly clear. When asked about the relationship between success and happiness, Hoffman does not hesitate: “Success is easier.”
