Mumbai: Dustin Hoffman has published his first memoir, Look at Me, at 89 years of age. The book was released on 10 November by Simon & Schuster. While promoting the book, the actor spoke about his early days in New York City, feeling miscast in the rom-com The Graduate and growing old in an interview with TODAY.
Hoffman wrote the memoir with The New Yorker journalist Ariel Levy. It covers his childhood, his years as a struggling actor and a Hollywood career spanning nearly six decades, including films like The Graduate (1967), Tootsie (1982), and Rain Man (1988).
Speaking to Willie Geist and Jenna Bush Hager on TODAY, Hoffman remembered his early years in New York with fellow actors Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall. At the time, none of them expected to become famous.
“We couldn’t get a job. We were character actors. We didn’t expect to get work. We certainly didn’t expect to get famous. We wanted to do good work. That’s all we wanted,” he said.
Hoffman’s big break came with Mike Nichols’ The Graduate in 1967. But he didn’t think he was right for the role of Benjamin Braddock, and even after being cast, he felt he didn’t belong in the film.
In an excerpt from the memoir published in The New Yorker, Hoffman wrote about how difficult the shoot had been. He was convinced Nichols regretted casting him and worried that he would be fired.
“It was a terrible experience making the movie that changed my life,” he wrote.
He also recalled being slapped 27 times by his co-star Katharine Ross for a scene that didn’t even make it into the film. Nichols kept asking Ross to hit him harder, leaving Hoffman dizzy by the end of the shoot.
Although The Graduate became a huge success, Hoffman didn’t make much money off it. He said he took home just $3,000 after expenses and even had to collect unemployment benefits.
The memoir also covers Rain Man (1988), which won Hoffman his second Academy Award for Best Actor. He wrote that he almost quit the film because he couldn’t figure out how to play Raymond Babbitt. An improvised scene with Tom Cruise eventually helped him understand the character.
Hoffman also addresses allegations of sexual misconduct made against him by several women in 2017. He denies the allegations of assault and coercion, but acknowledges that some of his behaviour may have made women uncomfortable. The book, however, does not go into the individual accusations in detail.
The title Look at Me comes from a conversation Hoffman had with Laurence Olivier while making Marathon Man in 1976. Hoffman had been talking about acting and why people choose to become actors. According to him, Olivier leaned towards him and whispered, “Look at me.”
On TODAY, Hoffman was asked whether writing his memoir at 89 had made him think about death. He pointed out that the book’s final chapter had an almost valedictory tone.
“Well, I think you have to when you’re, you know, a sneeze away from being 90. Family’s certainly aware of it. I mean, it’s the elephant in the room,” the actor said.
But Hoffman, who turns 90 next August, isn’t too worried.
“I’m a vegetarian. I go to bed early. I exercise. I have an extraordinary marriage, extraordinary children, which not everybody has, and I have all these things going, so death better watch out,” he added.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)