The Full Biography
Dustin Hoffman. Actor. The Los Angeles conservatory kid who made a leading man out of a character actor’s face and then lived long enough to be argued with in public.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is Benjamin Braddock in a diving suit, or Ratso Rizzo’s walk, or a woman named Dorothy Michaels who is also a man looking for a job. Two Academy Awards. What the still cannot show is Dustin Lee Hoffman of Los Angeles, a piano student who was not going to be a concert star, a New York waiter who was not pretty in the Gable sense, and a remaining life of Rain Man, directing, and 2017 accusations he has denied and that remain in the record.
He was born on August 8, 1937, in Los Angeles, to Harry Hoffman, a furniture salesman who had been a prop supervisor at Columbia, and Lillian Gold, who had wanted the piano for her son. Santa Monica City College, then the Pasadena Playhouse, where he roomed with Gene Hackman. The face was not a California leading man’s. He went east. He waited tables. He checked coats. He roomed, at various hungry stretches, with Hackman and Robert Duvall, which is a trivia sentence now and was, at the time, three unemployed men in a walk-up. He worked Off-Broadway. He took the parts that asked for a character actor’s concentration. Mike Nichols saw him on a New York stage and cast him in The Graduate (1967) against the tall-blond grain. Hoffman was thirty playing twenty-one. The diving suit, the affair with Mrs. Robinson, the bus at the end. The picture made him. The face the town had not wanted became the face of a decade’s unease.
He did not become Benjamin twice. Midnight Cowboy (1969), for John Schlesinger, proved the first picture was not a fluke. Ratso Rizzo is a limp, a cough, a hunger, a Times Square hustler who will not last the winter. Jon Voight is Joe Buck. The picture was X-rated and won Best Picture. Hoffman was nominated. He did not win. The limp stayed in the public mind longer than the statue would have. John and Mary (1969) with Mia Farrow was a New York romance the decade needed. Little Big Man (1970), for Arthur Penn, put him in a 121-year-old’s confession as Jack Crabb, a western that is also a joke about who writes the West. Who Is Harry Kellerman (1971) did not take. Straw Dogs (1971), for Sam Peckinpah, made him an American mathematician in an English village who discovers a violence he had not planned on. Papillon (1973) opposite Steve McQueen put him in a penal colony as Louis Dega. The roles changed. The disappearance into them did not.
Bob Fosse’s Lenny (1974) made him Lenny Bruce, a comic the country had already punished. Another nomination. Then the 1976 double that locked the New Hollywood run: Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men, as Carl Bernstein opposite Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward, a typewriter and a parking garage and a president walking toward the exit; and John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man, a thriller whose dentist scene — Laurence Olivier, “Is it safe?” — is still the civic object people flinch at. He was famous by then for being difficult in the service of a scene: one more take, one more object to hold, a fight with a director that sometimes improved the picture and sometimes merely delayed lunch. Colleagues have said both.
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), for Robert Benton, brought the first Oscar. Ted Kramer is a New York advertising man who has to learn how to be a father after Meryl Streep’s Joanna walks out. The picture is a custody fight and a breakfast. Hoffman played the learning, not the speech. He won Best Actor. The film won Best Picture. He was forty-two. Tootsie (1982), for Sydney Pollack, is the second great comic instrument: Michael Dorsey, an actor no one will hire, becomes Dorothy Michaels, a woman the soap opera will hire, and then has to live with what he learns. Hoffman has said the difficult man was close to home. The picture is a film about a man who has to become a woman to be employable and then learns he has been a problem. That plot sits next to the accusations that arrived in 2017 with an irony no publicist would order.
He vanished into the work. That was the brand and the gift. Death of a Salesman (1985), on television for Volker Schlöndorff, made him Willy Loman; he won an Emmy and a Golden Globe. Ishtar (1987), with Warren Beatty, became a punch line about cost. Rain Man (1988), for Barry Levinson, opposite Tom Cruise, brought the second Oscar. Raymond Babbitt is an autistic savant who counts cards and will not fly. Hoffman built the part from observation and repetition, a disappearance so complete the town treated it as a clinic. He won. He was fifty-one. Family Business (1989). Dick Tracy (1990). Hook (1991), as Captain Hook for Steven Spielberg, a pirate who is also a joke about aging leading men. Outbreak (1995). Sleepers (1996). Wag the Dog (1997), as a Hollywood producer manufacturing a war, another nomination. Sphere (1998). The range held. The face finally began to match the calendar.
The 2000s used the weathered instrument. Moonlight Mile (2002). Finding Neverland (2004) as Charles Frohman. Meet the Fockers (2004) and its sequel put him in a broad comedy as Bernie Focker, a part that asked him to be loose and did not mind if the town filed it as a paycheck. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006). Stranger than Fiction (2006) as a literature professor opposite Will Ferrell. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (2007). Last Chance Harvey (2008) with Emma Thompson, a small London romance that treated him as a man, not a syllabus. He directed Quartet (2012), a first feature as director, a story of retired opera singers in an English house. He took the chair the way he had taken a part: circling, objecting, suddenly precise. Before the chair there had been Sleepers and Wag the Dog and a run of pictures that used the reputation as a kind of credit rating. He spent it on parts, not on a brand.
A good review from a critic is just another stay of execution.Dustin Hoffman
The turn is age, and then 2017. That year several women described incidents of harassment and assault from earlier decades, beginning with writer Anna Graham Hunter’s account of the 1985 Death of a Salesman set, when she was seventeen. Hoffman denied wrongdoing, said he felt terrible if he had made anyone uncomfortable, and, through counsel on subsequent claims, called some of the accounts false. A complete life of a man who played predators and victims and clowns does not get to skip the docket of memory. It also does not get to treat an accusation as a conviction. The remaining years include the argument. They include, still, the pictures.
Six things most people never knew
- He was supposed to be a pianist. Los Angeles lessons. The face that could not be Gable went east instead.
- Hackman and Duvall were roommates before they were a syllabus. Three unemployed actors. The Mount Rushmore was a walk-up.
- The Graduate cast him against type on purpose. Nichols wanted the wrong face. The wrong face became the decade.
- Two Oscars, a decade apart, in family weather and in rain-man weather. Kramer, then Rain Man. The gift is disappearing, not dominating.
- Tootsie is a comic essay about a difficult man. He has said the character was close to home. The news made that sentence heavier.
- The 2017 accusations are part of the remaining life. Denied, not erased. The work remains. So does the testimony.
He married Anne Byrne in 1969; they had two children and divorced in 1980. That same year he married Lisa Gottsegen, whom he had known since she was a teenager in Los Angeles, a long marriage that has held. They have four children together. Friends describe a man who still talks like a rehearsal — circling, objecting, suddenly precise. He has taken smaller parts. He has not become a daily scold or a daily penitent. He has become quieter.
The later years
Home, after the second statue, has been Los Angeles more than New York, a house with Lisa, children and grandchildren, a man who still treats a script as an object to be argued with. He did not vanish. He chose. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017), for Noah Baumbach, put him in a family of artists who cannot stop competing; it premiered in the same season the accusations arrived. He played a sculptor who is also a problem. The picture did not ask the audience to acquit the man. It asked the audience to watch the work. He voiced Shifu in the Kung Fu Panda pictures, a second career the children in the house already knew. He took a part in The Program (2015) as a doctor in the Lance Armstrong file. He did not mount a perpetual campaign of being Dustin Hoffman. He stepped back from the talk-show sofa. The quiet is a choice.
The remaining public life is the streaming afterlife of The Graduate for people who cannot believe Benjamin is their grandfather’s age, and the syllabus that still runs Midnight Cowboy and Tootsie in the same semester. Young actors still steal Ratso’s walk. Directors still hire the face when they need a man who will not stop at the first take. He is in his late eighties. The character actor’s face finally matches the calendar. The leading man was always a trick. The trick worked for fifty years. Friends from the New York walk-up years describe a waiter who was already a technician. Friends from the Quartet set describe the same technician with a quieter voice. He has not written a confession. He has not written a rebuttal tour. He has, mostly, gone home.
Lisa has been the long marriage, the one the columns could not turn into a sitcom. The children have had to share a father who is a syllabus and, after 2017, an argument. He has not made them a press tour. He has directed once and not pretended the chair was a third Oscar. He has taken the small parts that interested him and declined the ones that only wanted the diving-suit still. The town that made him in 1967 is not the town that argued about him in 2017. He has lived in both. The pictures from the first town are still the reason a student sits down. The testimony from the second town is still in the record. Both stacks remain.
He does not do the perpetual appearance circuit. He does not do the perpetual apology circuit. He has become, in the remaining years, a man who will still talk about a scene if you put a scene in front of him, and who will not talk about much else on camera. The diving suit is a clip. The limp is a clip. Dorothy Michaels is a clip. The 2017 names are a clip of another kind. He is still here. The work is still here. The argument is still here. That is a remaining life, not a lap of honor, and not a disappearance into a verdict the courts never entered.
Los Angeles still claims the piano bench. New York still claims the walk-up. The Oscars claim the two nights. Film schools claim the rest. He has outlived the New Hollywood that made him, outlived the comic peak, outlived the season when every magazine wanted a take. What is left is a quieter house, an occasional role, and a body of work that does not get to choose its footnotes. He has not asked the footnotes to leave. He has also not agreed to be only the footnotes. The character actor’s face, at last, is the whole story the leading man was always hiding.
After the spotlight moved
It moved to the argument and to the syllabus. Film schools still run Midnight Cowboy and Tootsie. Young actors still steal Ratso’s walk. The articles still run the 2017 names. Both stacks are the remainder. The pictures do not acquit. The pictures also do not vanish because a docket opened.
Benjamin on the bus still ends a semester. Willy Loman on television still ends a unit. Raymond in a diner still ends a conversation about what disappearing costs. Dorothy Michaels still ends a conversation about what a difficult man learns. The accusations remain in the same file as the work because that is how a complete life is kept, not because a publicist designed it.
He came out of a piano bench in Los Angeles, waited tables with future statues, put on a diving suit, limped through New York, put on a dress, sat in a diner with a brother who counted cards, and then had to sit with a different kind of counting. If you only remember Benjamin, you have the still. If you remember Ratso, Dorothy Michaels, and the 2017 record, you have him.
Portrait: Sara Komatsu · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons