Dustin Hoffman Reveals How He Overcame a Truly ‘Terrible’ Filming Experience Early in His Career

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Dustin Hoffman has had an incredible career, but his breakout role was Mike Nichols’ 1967 film, “The Graduate.” In the film, Hoffman played the lead character Benjamin Braddock, which earned him an Academy Award nomination in 1968. Decades later, Hoffman has reflected on filming one of his first major roles and called it “terrible.” 

Dustin Hoffman Reflects on His Experience Filming ‘The Graduate’

In a chapter of his upcoming memoir “Look at Me,” published by The New Yorker on October 31, the 89-year-old Hollywood veteran shared his thoughts on working with Nichols. 

Hoffman wrote that the movie “exacerbated all my insecurities from the start,” People reports. After reading the 1963 novel “The Graduate” by Charles Webb, on which the film is based, he felt he was not the right person for the role, and he felt Nichols changed toward him once he was cast. He called the late director “an entirely different person” once filming began. “I often felt that I was about to be fired,” he shared.

Hoffman also discussed how Nichols’ feedback on his performance “kept me in a state of constant anxiety.” The actor described a scene in which his co-star hit him 27 times, but Nichols “didn’t even use the slap in the film.”

The synopsis for “The Graduate,” per IMDb, states: “A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.” In addition to Hoffman, the film starred Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross. 

Dustin Hoffman Almost Quit Acting 

In his essay for The New Yorker, Hoffman commented on how the film changed his life. “It was a terrible experience making the movie that changed my life. The whole time, I felt Mike was angry at me, either because I was doing something wrong or because he had realized what everybody else already knew, that he had miscast the lead in his film,” he wrote. 

Hoffman overcame this experience and was nominated for seven Academy Awards for his work in “The Graduate,” “Midnight Cowboy,” “Lenny,” “Tootsie,” and “Wag the Dog.” He also won Best Actor twice for his roles in the 1979 film, “Kramer vs. Kramer,” and the 1988 film “Rain Man.”

However, at one point, he swore he was done acting. In his essay, he said he told theatre director Ulu Grosbard he never wanted to “make another movie again for the rest of my life,” People reports. Nichols won best director for his work on “The Graduate.” 

In a 2009 interview with AARP, Hoffman reflected that his love for acting began after he took an acting class at Santa Monica College because he thought he would get an easy passing grade. He fell in love with it. He would then spend ten years “struggling for acting work,” AARP reports. Speaking of this time, Hoffman said, “I was a peripheral person. I was never invited to the parties. I did not go to the prom. So I was certainly comfortable as an actor hanging out with people that were also unemployed and struggling.”

Hoffman’s memoir, “Look at Me,” will be released on November 10.