AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Dustin Hoffman (1999) DVD-R

Starring Anne Bancroft, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Jessica Lange, Katharine Ross
Directed by Bruce Gowers
Print: Color
Runtime: 60 min
Genre: Documentary

Dustin Hoffman made his first impact on Hollywood and American moviegoers just over 30 years ago in Mike Nichols’ THE GRADUATE. Even though the actor at first didn’t see himself as right for the role of the tentative and easily seducible young Benjamin Braddock, his performance is among the most precisely shaded acting jobs of its era. Looking back, it isn’t surprising in the least that THE GRADUATE made him a star.

But there were many at the time who were quite surprised. In the Sixties, “real” leading men were perceived to be tall and strong with chiseled features and perfect smiles — cinematic gods. But Hoffman had more in common with an earlier generation of stars — Cagney, Robinson, Bogart — who didn’t look like gods, but like real, albeit extraordinary, human beings. Hoffman, an actor first, a star second, went to great pains to assure that his performances would be suffused with realism and with empathy. He once said, “One of the things that constantly hits me is that when I go outside on the street, what I see is not what I see on the screen. I turn on the television, and what I see on the screen is not what I see in real life. It bothers me. I want to get closer to what I see in life. I love to see hair out of place. I love to see people without makeup, or at least with their own blush showing, their own pimples, and their own specific behavior.”