1960–1966: Early theatre roles Hoffman's first acting role was at the Pasadena Playhouse, alongside future Academy Award–winner
Gene Hackman. After two years there, Hackman headed for New York City, with Hoffman soon following. Hoffman, Hackman, and
Robert Duvall lived together in the 1960s, whilst all three of them focused on finding acting jobs. Hackman remembers, "The idea that any of us would do well in films simply didn't occur to us. We just wanted to work". During this period, Hoffman got occasional television bit parts, including commercials but, needing income, he briefly left acting in order to teach. Hoffman then studied at
Actors Studio and became a dedicated
method actor. In 1960 Hoffman was cast in a role in an
off-Broadway production and followed with a
bit part in his
Broadway debut in production,
A Cook for Mr. General (1961). In 1962, he appeared in Rabbit Run Theatre's summer stock production of
Write Me a Murder in
Madison, Ohio and served as an assistant director to
Ulu Grosbard on
The Days and Nights of BeeBee Fenstermaker at off-Broadway's
Sheridan Square Playhouse. In 1964, Hoffman appeared in
Three Men on a Horse at
Princeton's
McCarter Theatre and in 1965, in off-Broadway's
Harry, Noon and Night with
Joel Grey. On June 23, 1965, he played Mendy in a practice run of
Philip Roth's abandoned off-Broadway play
The Nice Jewish Boy, directed by
Gene Saks and co-starring
Melinda Dillon. Grosbard and Hoffman reunited for a 1965 recording of
Death of a Salesman starring
Lee J. Cobb and
Mildred Dunnock, with Hoffman playing Bernard. He was assistant director for Grosbard's 1965 off-Broadway production of
A View from the Bridge starring Robert Duvall and
Jon Voight, and in late 1965 stage-managed and appeared in Grosbard's
The Subject Was Roses on Broadway. Hoffman's "sharply outlined and vividly colored" performance in off-Broadway's
The Journey of the Fifth Horse in April 1966 was followed by another critical success in the play
Eh?, by
Henry Livings, which had its U.S. premiere at the
Circle in the Square Theatre on October 16, 1966.
Sidney W. Pink, a producer and
3D-movie pioneer, discovered Hoffman in one of his off-Broadway roles and cast him in ''
Madigan's Millions. Through the early and mid-1960s, Hoffman made appearances in television shows and movies, including Naked City, The Defenders and Hallmark Hall of Fame''. Hoffman starred in the 1966
off-Broadway play
Eh?, for which he received a
Drama Desk Award. He made his film debut in
The Tiger Makes Out in 1967, alongside
Eli Wallach. In 1967, immediately after wrapping up principal filming on
The Tiger Makes Out, Hoffman flew from New York City to
Fargo, North Dakota, where he directed productions of
William Gibson's
Two for the Seesaw and
William Saroyan's
The Time of Your Life for the Fargo-Moorhead Community Theatre. The $1,000 he received for the eight-week contract was all he had to hold him over until the funds from the movie materialized.
1967–1969: The Graduate and breakthrough Director
Mike Nichols auditioned Hoffman in 1966 for a lead role in the
Broadway musical The Apple Tree but rejected him because he could not sing well enough, and gave
Alan Alda the part. However, Nichols was so impressed with Hoffman's overall audition that he cast him as the male lead in the movie
The Graduate (1967). The role was that of Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate who has an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's law partner. It was Hoffman's first major role; he received an
Academy Award nomination for it, but lost to
Rod Steiger for
In the Heat of the Night. Although David Zeitlin joked in
Life magazine that "if Dustin Hoffman's face were his fortune, he'd be committed to a life of poverty",
The Graduate was a gigantic box office hit for
Embassy Pictures, making Hoffman a major new star at the same time. The film received near-unanimous good reviews.
Time magazine called Hoffman "a symbol of youth" who represented "a new breed of actors". The film's screenwriter,
Buck Henry, notes that Hoffman's character made conventional good looks no longer necessary on screen, "A whole generation changed its idea of what guys should look like. ... I think Dustin's physical being brought a sort of social and visual change, in the same way people first thought of
Bogart. They called
him ugly".
Turner Classic Movies critic Rob Nixon notes that Hoffman represented "a new generation of actors". He credits Hoffman with breaking "the mold of the traditional movie star and brought to their roles a new candor, ethnicity, and eagerness to dive deep into complex, even unlikable characters." Nixon expands on the significance of the film to Hoffman's career: "In
The Graduate, he created a lasting resonance as Ben Braddock that made him an overnight sensation and set him on the road to becoming one of our biggest stars and most respected actors." '' (1969) Critic Sam Kashner observed strong similarities between Hoffman's character and that of Nichols when he previously acted with
Elaine May in the comedy team of
Nichols and May. "Just close your eyes and you'll hear a Mike Nichols—Elaine May routine in any number of scenes."
Buck Henry also noticed that "Dustin picked up all these Nichols habits, which he used in the character. Those little noises he makes are straight from Mike", he says. He was then offered the lead in
Midnight Cowboy (1969), which he accepted partly to prove many critics were wrong about his acting range and the variety of characters he could portray.
Peter Biskind wrote, "it was the very contrast between his preppy character in
The Graduate, and Ratso Rizzo" that appealed to Hoffman. 'I had become troubled,' recalls Hoffman, 'by the reviews that I read of
The Graduate, that I was not a
character actor, which I like to think of myself as. It hurt me. Some of the stuff in the press was brutal.'" Biskind considers Hoffman's acting a major accomplishment: on the set of
John and Mary (1969) Also in 1969, Hoffman co-starred with
Mia Farrow in the
Peter Yates's romantic drama film
John and Mary. He received a 1970
British Academy Film Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film, although the film received mixed reviews. He was also nominated for a
Golden Globe Award for
Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Motion Picture The film was made soon after the success of Farrow's performance in
Roman Polanski's ''
Rosemary's Baby'' (1968), and Hoffman's performance in
The Graduate, which prompted their being hailed on the cover of the February 27, 1969,
Time magazine as stars of their generation.
1970–1979: Film stardom and acclaim This was followed by his role in
Little Big Man (1970), where Jack Crabb, his character, ages from teenager to a 121-year-old man. The film was widely praised by critics, but was overlooked for an award except for a supporting nomination for
Chief Dan George. Hoffman continued to appear in major films over the next few years.
Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971),
Straw Dogs (also 1971), and
Papillon (1973). He returned to Broadway in 1974, directing
All Over Town. Hoffman next starred in
Lenny (1974), for which he was again nominated for Best Actor.
Lenny was based on the life of stand-up comedian
Lenny Bruce, who died at the age of 40, and was known for his open, free-style and critical form of comedy which integrated politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. Expectations were high that Hoffman would win an Oscar for his portrayal, especially after his similar role in
Midnight Cowboy. Film critic Katharine Lowry speculates that director
Bob Fosse "never gave him a chance" to go far enough into developing the character. "We never understand what, besides the drugs he injected, made him tick like a time bomb", she says. '' in 1974 However, notes author
Paul Gardner, "directing
Lenny, his most ambitious project, exhausted Fosse emotionally and physically. It turned his life inside out", with shooting days often lasting 10 to 12 hours: "The Lenny Bruce project, based on Julian Barry's play, had gone through two studios and three scripts, and was a problem child, like Lenny himself. But Fosse wanted to do it, and he wanted Dustin Hoffman". Movie critic
Judith Crist gave Hoffman credit for the ultimate success of the film:
Lenny was nominated for six
Academy Awards, including
Best Picture,
Best Director,
Best Actor,
Best Actress,
Best Adapted Screenplay, and
Best Cinematography. ''
All the President's Men (1976) was made less than two years after the Watergate scandal, and starred Hoffman and Robert Redford as the real-life journalists, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, respectively. Based on actual events, Hoffman and Redford play Washington Post reporters who uncover a break-in at the Watergate Hotel and end up investigating a political scandal that reaches all the way to the presidency. The film, as earlier ones, had Hoffman take on a dramatically different character than his previous one (as Lenny Bruce), although both men, Bruce and Bernstein, set their faces against abuses of institutional power, and the tendency for society to ignore such abuses. Author James Morrison compares the two roles: "As Lenny Bruce in Lenny
(1974), Hoffman plays a martyr to the cause of establishment oppression, while in All the President's Men'', he plays a reporter exposing presidential malfeasance."
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times described the film as "a spellbinding detective story". "The strength of the movie", he added, was "the virtually day-to-day record of the way Bernstein and Woodward conducted their investigations." The characters portrayed by Hoffman and Redford shared the rank of No. 27 Hero on
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list, while
Entertainment Weekly ranked ''All the President's Men'' as one of the 25 "Powerful Political Thrillers". on
The Bette Midler TV Special (1977) Hoffman next starred in
Marathon Man (1976), a film based on
William Goldman's
novel of the same name, opposite
Laurence Olivier and
Roy Scheider. Its director,
John Schlesinger also directed Hoffman in
Midnight Cowboy in 1969. Described as "Schlesinger's thriller", by author
Gene D. Phillips, Hoffman plays the hero, Babe Levy, a part-time long-distance runner and graduate student, who suddenly finds himself being pursued by a fugitive Nazi. To put himself in the mindset of someone under severe emotional distress, Hoffman did not sleep for days at a time and let his body become disheveled and unhealthy. Olivier was alarmed when Hoffman turned up on set for the dental torture scene. Hoffman explained what he had done, and Olivier replied: "My dear boy, have you ever tried simply acting? It's much easier." Goldman describes his inspiration for the novel: "What if someone close to you was something totally different from what you thought? In the story, Hoffman thinks his brother (Roy Scheider) is a businessman where the reality is that the man is a spy, who has been involved with the Nazi, Szell." However, Hoffman remembers a serious disagreement he had with Goldman, who also wrote the screenplay, about how the story ends: Hoffman's next roles were also successful. He opted out of directing
Straight Time (1978), but starred as a thief. His next film,
Michael Apted's
Agatha (1979), was with
Vanessa Redgrave as
Agatha Christie, focussing on the missing eleven days of the author's life. The part of Archie Christie was played by
Timothy Dalton, then partner of
Vanessa Redgrave, and later to star in James Bond movies. Dalton's depiction of cold indifference to his wife produced a perfect foil to Hoffman's portrayal of warm compassion, humor and sensitivity. The film had both romantic and comic moments whilst the overall plot cleverly mirrored one of Christie's detective novels.
Agatha was generally very well received by critics, especially in the UK, and maintains an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Hoffman next starred in
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) co-starring
Meryl Streep and directed by
Robert Benton. The film tells the story of a married couple's divorce and its impact on everyone involved, including the couple's young son. Hoffman won his first
Academy Award, and the film also received the Best Picture honor, plus the awards for Best Supporting Actress (Streep), Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film required Hoffman to change his attitude, from being a "desensitized advertising art director" into becoming a "responsive and concerned daddy" after his wife (Streep) walks out on him and their six-year-old son, Billy. Hoffman, during the making of the movie, was also going through his own divorce after a ten-year first marriage. Hoffman has said, "Giving myself permission not only to be present but to be a father was a kind of epiphany for me at that time, that I could get to through my work. ... I got closer to being a father by playing a father. That's very painful to say."
1980–1989: Career expansion '' (1985) In
Tootsie (1982), Hoffman portrays Michael Dorsey, a struggling actor who finds himself dressing up as a woman to land a role on a
soap opera. His co-star was
Jessica Lange.
Tootsie earned ten Academy Award nominations, including Hoffman's fifth nomination. Under direction by
Sydney Pollack, Hoffman's role demanded "a steady bombardment of opposites—edgy then funny, romantic then realistic, soft then quivering." To film critic
David Denby, Hoffman's character "embodies vulnerability and drive in perfect proportion. He has the knack of making everything he does seem perilous, and so audiences feel protective of him and root for him." Hoffman's acting was made more difficult than necessary, however, as he was not given the rehearsal time Pollack promised, "I like to be very prepared, and I feel that the success or failure of a film is many times determined before you start principal photography. I wanted rehearsal very much. I was promised two weeks and was grieved that I didn't get it. We also followed the risky course of starting to shoot with a screenplay that wasn't completed". Fellow actor
Gary Oldman reported that, during a telephone conversation with Hoffman, the latter recalled having made comments toward a "very powerful" industry figure who ensured that he was unable to find work in Hollywood for some time following
Tootsie. In 1983, Hoffman became a Major Donor for
The Mirror Theater Ltd, alongside
Paul Newman and
Al Pacino, matching a grant from
Laurance Rockefeller. The men were inspired to invest by their connection with
Lee Strasberg, as Lee's then daughter-in-law Sabra Jones was the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of The Mirror. In 1983, Hoffman signed on to star in
The Yellow Jersey, which was to be a bicycle-racing drama set during the
Tour de France. Hoffman was passionate about the project, considering several directors, firstly
Michael Cimino whom he later fired due to the director's uncompromising way of working. The film's producers, however, failed to find a suitable replacement, so the film was not made. In 1984, Hoffman starred as
Willy Loman in the Broadway revival of
Arthur Miller's play
Death of a Salesman. He reprised his role in a
TV movie of the same name, for which he won the 1985
Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor along with a
Golden Globe. Hoffman first read the play at the age of 16, but today considers the story much like his own: "It was a blueprint of my family. I was the loser, the flunky, and my brother, a high-school varsity football player, was Biff." Author
Marie Brenner notes that Hoffman "has been obsessed with the play" throughout his career: "For years he has wanted to be Willy Loman; when he discovered that Arthur Miller was his neighbor in Connecticut, they began to talk about it in earnest." For Hoffman, the story also left a deep emotional impact from the time he first read it, "I read that play, and I was just destroyed by it. It was like finding out something terrible about my family. I just shook. I felt like my family's privacy had been invaded. I couldn't even talk about it for weeks". Hoffman and Beatty were unaffected by the flop, and
Ishtar became a
cult film.
Quentin Tarantino, for one, has called it one of his favorite movies, partly due to the humorous lyrics of the songs written by
Paul Williams. Hoffman worked at the
New York Psychiatric Institute, affiliated with
Columbia University, when he was 21. "It was a great experience for me", he said. "All my life I had wanted to get inside a prison or a mental hospital. ... I wanted to get inside where behavior, human behavior, was so exposed. All the things the rest of us were feeling and stopping up were coming out of these people." Hoffman created certain character traits for Raymond. Denby noted: "Hoffman, looking suddenly older and smaller, has developed a small shuffling walk for Raymond, with shoulder bent. His eyes don't make contact with anyone else's, and he flattens his voice to a dry nasal bark." 1989. Dustin Hoffman played Shylock in Peter Hall's production of Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice at the Pheonix Theatre in London, transferring to New York the following year.
1990–1999: Established actor In 1991, Hoffman voiced substitute teacher Mr. Bergstrom in
The Simpsons episode "
Lisa's Substitute". He was credited under the pseudonym Sam Etic, a play on "Semitic". Throughout the 1990s, Hoffman appeared in many large, studio films, such as
Dick Tracy (1990) (where his
Ishtar co-star Beatty plays the titular character),
Hero (1992) and
Billy Bathgate (1991) co-starring with
Nicole Kidman (who was nominated for a
Golden Globe). Hoffman also played the title role of
Captain Hook in
Steven Spielberg's
Hook (also 1991), earning a
Golden Globe nomination, and the narrator in
Dr. Seuss Video Classics:
Horton Hears a Who! (also 1992); in
Hook, Hoffman's costume was so heavy that he had to wear an air-conditioned suit under it. Hoffman played the lead role in
Outbreak (1995), alongside
Rene Russo,
Kevin Spacey,
Morgan Freeman,
Cuba Gooding Jr. and
Donald Sutherland. In the film, Hoffman is a medical doctor, serving as a Colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps., working at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), who uncovers a newly discovered
Ebola-like virus which came to the U.S. from Africa in an infected monkey. Hoffman races to stop the virus's spread and find a vaccine before it becomes a worldwide pandemic with no cure. It was one of the films that was produced by his production banner, Punch Productions. The film is described by critic
Roger Ebert as "one of the great scare stories of our time, the notion that deep in the uncharted rain forests, deadly diseases are lurking, and if they ever escape their jungle homes and enter the human bloodstream, there will be a new plague the likes of which we have never seen." Critic
David Denby credits Hoffman with giving the movie much of its thriller-like quality: Following that, he appeared in the 1996 revenge drama/legal thriller
Sleepers (1996) with Robert De Niro,
Brad Pitt,
Jason Patric, and
Kevin Bacon. In the mid-1990s, Hoffman starred in—and was deeply involved in the production of—
David Mamet's
American Buffalo (also 1996), and an early effort of film editor Kate Sanford. In 1997, Hoffman starred opposite
John Travolta in the
Costa Gavras film
Mad City. Hoffman gained his seventh Academy Award nomination for his performance in
Wag The Dog (1997), in a role that allowed Hoffman the chance to work with both
Robert De Niro and
Denis Leary. The movie is a
black comedy film produced and directed by
Barry Levinson, who also directed Hoffman in
Rain Man in 1988. The story takes place a few days before a presidential election, where a Washington, D.C. spin doctor (De Niro) distracts the electorate from a sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood film producer (Hoffman) to construct a fake war with Albania. Hoffman, as a caricature of real life producer
Robert Evans, according to some, "gives the kind of wonderfully funny performance that is liable to win prizes, especially since its mixture of affection and murderous parody is so precise. Stanley (Hoffman) conducts business meetings in tennis clothes or in robe and slippers", notes critic
Janet Maslin. '' in 2008 He next appeared in another Barry Levinson film, the science fiction psychological thriller,
Sphere (1998), opposite
Sharon Stone. In 1999, Hoffman received the
AFI Life Achievement Award and recalls the emotional impact that receiving the award had on him, "There was this reel of pictures, me playing all these different roles. I had my first—and only, thank God—panic attack. What followed was depression. ... It had to do with a central core in me, which was that I never felt I deserved success". Seven years after his nomination for
Wag the Dog, Hoffman performed again with
Robert De Niro, co-starring with Streisand and
Ben Stiller in the 2004 comedy
Meet the Fockers, a sequel to
Meet the Parents (2000). Hoffman won the 2005 MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance. In 2005, he voiced a horse in
Racing Stripes, and appeared in cameo roles in
Andy García's
The Lost City and on the final episode of
HBO sitcom
Curb Your Enthusiasms fifth season. Hoffman appeared in
Stranger than Fiction (2006), played the perfumer Giuseppe Baldini in
Tom Tykwer's film
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (also 2006). In 2007, Hoffman was featured in an advertising campaign for
Australian
telecommunications company
Telstra's Next G network, appeared in the
50 Cent video "Follow My Lead" as a psychiatrist, and played the title character in the British family film ''
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium for which he was nominated for a BIFA for Best Performance by an Actor in a British Independent Film at the British Independent Film Awards 2007. In 2008, although he was reluctant to perform in an animated feature film (despite previously performing voices in a version of The Point! and in an episode of The Simpsons), Hoffman had a prominent role as Shifu in the film Kung Fu Panda'', which was praised in part for his comedic chemistry with
Jack Black (whom he tutored in acting for an important scene) and his character's poignantly complex relationship with the story's villain. He later won the
Annie Award for
Voice Acting in an Animated Feature for his performance and has continued into the role in the franchise's subsequent filmed productions outside of the franchise's
television series. He next voiced Roscuro in
The Tale of Despereaux. As the title character in
Last Chance Harvey, Hoffman acted with co-star
Emma Thompson in the story of two lonely people who tentatively forge a relationship over the course of three days. Director
Joel Hopkins notes that Hoffman was a perfectionist and self-critical: "He often wanted to try things stripped down, because less is sometimes more. He worries about every little detail." However, his character plays a significantly smaller role than in the previous installment. In 2011, Hoffman reprised his role as Master Shifu in the commercially and critically successful animated film
Kung Fu Panda 2. In 2012, Hoffman's audiobook recording of
Jerzy Kosinski's
Being There was released at
Audible.com. Hoffman starred in the
HBO horse racing drama
Luck, as a man involved in
bookmaking and casino operations.
Luck was canceled in March 2012 after one season following the death of three horses on set. In 2012, Hoffman made his directorial debut with
Quartet, starring
Maggie Smith,
Tom Courtenay,
Pauline Collins,
Billy Connolly, and
Michael Gambon. The
BBC comedy-drama premiered at the
2012 Toronto Film Festival where it earned respectable reviews from critics. Smith was nominated for
Golden Globe for her performance. In 2015, Hoffman starred in ''
Roald Dahl's Esio Trot'', a BBC television film adaptation of
Roald Dahl's classic
novel, adapted by
Richard Curtis and co-starring
Judi Dench. Hoffman received an
Emmy Award for Best Performance by an Actor. In 2016, he once again lent his voice to Master Shifu in the animated feature
Kung Fu Panda 3. ,
Emma Thompson,
Ben Stiller, and
Adam Sandler at the
Cannes Film Festival screening of
The Meyerowitz Stories in 2017 In 2017, Hoffman starred in
Noah Baumbach's
Netflix film
The Meyerowitz Stories alongside
Adam Sandler,
Ben Stiller,
Elizabeth Marvel and
Emma Thompson. The film premiered at the
Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2017, where it received a four-minute standing ovation. In 2017, Hoffman was honored with the
Gotham Awards Tribute alongside
Sofia Coppola,
Nicole Kidman,
Edward Lachman. Hoffman was introduced by
Elizabeth Marvel. In 2020, it was announced that Hoffman would make his return to the Broadway stage in
Scott Rudin's revival of
Our Town as the Stage Manager. Hoffman's last appearance on stage was 30 years prior in
The Merchant of Venice in 1989. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, Broadway theaters remained shut until 2021. Hoffman appeared alongside
Candice Bergen,
Dianna Agron and
Simon Helberg in
As They Made Us directed by
Mayim Bialik. He also starred alongside
Sissy Spacek and his son
Jake Hoffman in Darren Le Gallo's directorial film debut
Sam & Kate which began filming in February 2022. In September 2021, he was attached to feature comedy film
Mr. Shaw Goes To Hollywood as
MGM studio head,
Louis B Mayer. Filming would tentatively commence fall 2021. In October 2022, Hoffman was cast in
Francis Ford Coppola's latest film, a dystopian science fiction epic
Megalopolis. The film reunited Hoffman with his
Midnight Cowboy costar
Jon Voight. The film premiered at the
2024 Cannes Film Festival. Hoffman is attached to
Peter Greenaway's upcoming film
Tower Stories, which has started filming in the Tuscan city of
Lucca. Most recently, he has reprised his role as Master Shifu in
Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024). == Legacy and reputation ==