Dustin Hoffman Always Wanted to Be a Comedian, Reflects on Becoming a Hollywood Leading Man

Our first guest tonight is an Emmy and Academy Award winning actor you know from films such as The Graduate, Kramer vs. Kramer, Rain Man, Midnight Cowboy, Wag the Dog, All the President's Men, and many, many more. His memoir, Look at Me, was published this week. Please welcome to the show the one, the one and only, Dustin Hoffman, everybody. Everybody. Hello, Dustin. How are you? I'm actually very excited to meet you. I'm very excited to meet you, too. This is a big deal for me. Thank you. I just always wanted to be a comedian. Did you want to be a comedian, first and foremost? Well, you actually tell an interesting story about that realization that all of us want to be looked at. Yes. And that, what were you doing in the book? You remember the first moment that you did something funny and the kids at school laughed at you, that you were... Yes, and I don't know, because I didn't want to be an actor, but actually, one of my earliest memories My actual first memory is just being born. Yeah. You actually, you're one of those people that remember it? No, I wish I could. Okay, good, yeah. Some people claim it, and I don't know. No, no, no. Yeah. So I think I was around three or four in preschool, kindergarten they called it. And there was like some chocolate syrup or something, and there was pea soup. And I poured the chocolate syrup into the soup, and I ate it so the kids would laugh. Yeah. And you liked it. No. You didn't like the pea soup, but you liked being laughed You liked the laugh. Yes. Yeah. There's an interesting photo. This is after The Graduate. This is a picture from you. Life magazine at the unemployment office. It is. So this speaks to the life of an actor that after you're in one of the hit films of the time, you're still going to the unemployment office. Well, what happened was is that they were very angry at me because they were testing a lot of people. And they wanted me to come out and test. And if I got the part, they wanted you to give them six movies. And I said, I'm not going to give six movies. I said, I only want to do what I want to do. That's why I never got work. So. And so what happened was, is that I wound up after that movie is a huge success. I'm putting $3,000 in the bank and I had no money. Yeah. And I went down to unemployment and somehow somebody knew I was there because I went every week and I remember it was $50, which was the most you could make was good money. And the second week, they sent somebody down there from Life magazine. And then I couldn't go down there anymore because the other actors that are waiting think, what's he doing here? Yeah, it's very hard to claim unemployment when your name's in a big marquee for a big film like that. There's an amazing thing in this book, which I'm so impressed by, which is in these early years where you're sort of a struggling actor, you're in New York, you're writing letters back to your parents. Yeah. They saved these letters, and then when they passed away, these letters came back to you. My mother. Yes, your mother. And it's amazing to see, to be able to look back exactly where your mind was at when you were a 25-year-old struggling actor. Are these letters that you reread a lot, or did you just reread them for the purposes of writing this memoir? I didn't. I never looked at them. She collected everything. I mean, if there was a roll of toilet paper, I mean, she would. I got one of those moms. And suddenly, when she died, her stuff was given to me, and it was a great big thing, and I never looked at it then. And then when... I said, well, maybe I should write a memoir. I started looking at it for the first time. And it was like someone I didn't know. It's really amazing who, first moved to New York, you crash at a friend's house. That friend is Gene Hackman. Robert Duvall is one of your early friends out here. And you guys talk about the fact, look, you wanted to be actors. You thought you'd be character actors. You didn't perceive that Hollywood would ever make leading men out of guys who looked and acted like you. Uh, was it surreal over the, you know, as you go through the 70s and the 80s and you realize, look at us, we're all leading men. Was that just a surreal thing to watch? Well, look, if we were at a party, me, Duval, and Hackman, they would say, you three guys are going to be movie stars. I mean, everyone would have laughed because movie stars in those days looked like movie stars. Yeah. You know, they didn't look like this. The person in the audience, you know, and suddenly it changed and nobody wanted good looking guys. They wanted dwarfs. You know? I think that's a little unfair. That's fair. You're being unfair to yourself. I won't stand for it. Amazing stories about films I love. Midnight Cowboy, you say your most quoted line. Yes. Which you hear all the time. Yeah. Your most quoted line. I'm walking here. I'm walking here. Not. And this is an amazing thing. For you to share, and it does share, like, how much of filmmaking is the magic of, you know, capturing the right moment. Not a scripted line, a thing you actually said because you were just walking in the street. It was a low, yes, it was a low, you could give me quick answers, right? Yeah. No, you can give me as long of answers as you want. It's not live, it's tape so you can cut it down. You know what, I don't think, look, you've been very traumatized by being a film actor. You go as long as you want, Mr. Hoffman, yeah. Dustin, please. Dustin, okay. So, I can call you Seth? You can call... It's just, it's my show, and I don't want the audience to start thinking they can get familiar with me. You can call me Seth. You can call me Seth. You know, when I knew I was going to be on your show, I looked up your name. There's a lot of Seths around. It is, right? Why is that? When I was coming up, I felt like it was the only Seth around, and now it's McFarlane, Rogan, Green. It's heartbreaking. And what is it? And you're still, I feel like you're still the only Dustin. Well, there was a... Yes, I am. Yeah, yeah. Take the win. Thank you again. But I'm walking here. Okay, so it's a low-budget movie because Jon Voight is starring in it and he's playing a male hooker. In those days, you couldn't get financing. Sure. Sure. And I'm his buddy, and my name is Ratso Rizzo, and I'm a really unpleasant person. And so... Being low budget, everything has to be done quickly, and they can't pay for traffic, they can't pay for pedestrians, so there's this scene where we have to walk 10 blocks, and with real traffic and real pedestrians, the camera's hidden, it's across the street, it's called a stolen shot, and we get to the corner, and there's a light there, and we had to keep going back and forth because the light was red, so we said, okay, we'll get further back. Finally, by the 11th or 12th time, we get back, and just as we get there, it turns green because we still have more dialogue, and we go, and halfway across the street, a cab literally had jumped the signal, and it was going to hit us. Yeah. There was no doubt of it. And your brain is funny because I was going to say, hey, I'm making a movie here. I'm acting here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that would have really screwed it up. Yeah. So somehow what came out was, I'm walking here. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, what a thing. What a thing. You also, I really, Marathon Man is a film I could watch over and over again. Why? I just love it. I just love it. I've always, I love dentistry. Um... You love being in the chair. I love just being in the chair. No Novocaine. I just like, that's my, that's my dream. But Laurence Olivier, I'd always heard this story, and I had worried it was apocryphal, Which is, um... I thought you were the method actor, and he was the Shakespearean-trained actor. And there was a story I'd heard where he had said to you once, when you came in looking bedraggled on a day where you had to play someone who was, you know, under great duress. Who had not slept all night. Had not slept all night. That he said to you, you know, you could always... I don't want to misquote Laurence Olivier. He said, what did he say? What do you have to say? Well, the thing is is that I stayed up all night because the character stayed up all night, but also I wasn't married and there was Studio 54, you know as I said. So you weren't just like staying up to stay up. Correct. Yeah, it was really a treat. Yeah. It does seem like maybe the greatest decade to stay up. Yes, yes. Yes, it was. So I come there, and I said, you know, I'm really tired and everything, and I told him that I stayed up all night, and he was, and I loved him. He had wonderful British accent. He says, why don't you try acting, dear boy? Oh boy. And it's great, and but what's lovely about the book is, right, I'd always heard that story as him... Sort of putting down your process, but he was your friend you guys loved each other and and it's interesting because you know You told that story I had never realized you told that story to a reporter and they had reframed it But that was there were great many things I loved about this book But that was that was one that I found really special and congratulations on an incredible career and what a lovely book Oh, my God. I'm going back. Are you fine about that? So guys, this is Dustin Hoffman, look at me. We'll be right back with James Acaster. That's it.