Young Dustin Hoffman Playing Tennis in High School
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
Young Dustin Hoffman Playing Tennis in High School
College/University
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
340 E 54th St, New York, NY 10022, United States
Hoffman took classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City.
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1900 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90405, United States
Santa Monica College, where Hoffman studied in 1955-1956
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman at Yearbook Photo
Career
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1967
Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1967
Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1967
Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1969
Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1973
Dustin Hoffman in Papillon (1973)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1973
Dustin Hoffman in Papillon (1973)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1974
Dustin Hoffman in Lenny (1974)
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1976
Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (1976)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1976
Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men (1976)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1978
Dustin Hoffman in Straight Time (1978)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1982
Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (1982)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1982
Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (1982)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1988
Dustin Hoffman (left) and Tom Cruise in Rain Man (1988)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
1988
Dustin Hoffman (right) and Tom Cruise in Rain Man (1988)
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
2004
Dustin Hoffman (left) and Ben Stiller in Meet the Fockers
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
2012
Dustin Hoffman makes his directorial debut with the film Quartet.
Gallery of Dustin Hoffman
2013
Star Tom Courtenay and director Dustin Hoffman in Paris at the film's French premiere, March 2013
Achievements
1980
Hoffman won his first Academy Award for his role in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Membership
Awards
Academy Awards
1989
Hoffman with his second Academy Award for his role in Rain Man (1988)
Golden Globes
Dustin Hoffman was a recipient of the Golden Globe Award six times. On the photo, he is holding his first Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer, for the film The Graduate
Cecil B. DeMille Award
Dustin Hoffman accepting the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for Best Actor for Tootsie in 1983.
Primetime Emmy Award
Primetime Emmy Award, which Dustin Hoffman received in 1986
American Film Institute Life Achievement Award
Dustin Hoffman was awarded the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1999.
BAFTA/LA Britannia Awards
The Britannia Award was presented by BAFTA Los Angeles to Dustin Hoffman in 1997.
Honorary Golden Berlin Bear
Dustin Hoffman was a recipient of the Honorary Golden Berlin Bear in 1989.
Honorary César Award
2 Rue Edouard Colonne, 75001 Paris, France
Emma Thompson (R) and actor Dustin Hoffman reacts as he receives a Cesar Award during the show at the Cesar Film Awards held at the Chatelet Theater on February 27, 2009 in Paris.
MTV Movie + TV Awards
In 2005 Dustin Hoffman received MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance in the film Meet the Fockers (2004)
Kennedy Center Honors
Dustin Hoffman received Kennedy Center Honors in 2012, with the following commendation: "Dustin Hoffman's unyielding commitment to the wide variety of roles he plays has made him one of the most versatile and iconoclastic actors of this or any other generation".
Dustin Hoffman was a recipient of the Golden Globe Award six times. On the photo, he is holding his first Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer, for the film The Graduate
Emma Thompson (R) and actor Dustin Hoffman reacts as he receives a Cesar Award during the show at the Cesar Film Awards held at the Chatelet Theater on February 27, 2009 in Paris.
Dustin Hoffman received Kennedy Center Honors in 2012, with the following commendation: "Dustin Hoffman's unyielding commitment to the wide variety of roles he plays has made him one of the most versatile and iconoclastic actors of this or any other generation".
(In the present day, 121-year-old Jack Crabb, the oldest l...)
In the present day, 121-year-old Jack Crabb, the oldest living man in the world and residing in a hospice, recounts his plentiful life story to a curious historian. Among other things, Crabb claims to have had been a captive of the Cheyenne, a gunslinger, an associate of Wild Bill Hickok, a scout for General George Armstrong Custer, and the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn.
(A graduate history student is unwittingly caught in the m...)
A graduate history student is unwittingly caught in the middle of an international conspiracy involving stolen diamonds, an exiled Nazi war criminal, and a rogue government agent.
(Academy Award-winner Dustin Hoffman and Gary Busey star i...)
Academy Award-winner Dustin Hoffman and Gary Busey star in the dramatic and riveting story of an ex-con battling for a new life and love in the glare and tension of the big city.
(What really happened to mystery writer Agatha Christie wh...)
What really happened to mystery writer Agatha Christie when she vanished for 11 days in 1926? Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave star in this ingenious solution to an enduring mystery.
(During the post-war boom period of the late '40s, Willy L...)
During the post-war boom period of the late '40s, Willy Loman is an aging, traveling salesman, who despairs that his life his been lived in vain. Facing dispensability and insignificance in a heated, youthful economy, Willy is not ready to part with his cherished fantasies of an America that admires him for personable triumphs in the marketplace. But the reality is far more difficult than that, and the measure of Willy's self-delusion and contradictions is found in his two sons. One, Harold, is a ne'er-do-well gliding on inherited hot air and repressed feelings, and the other, Biff, a mousy, retiring sort unable to reconcile the difference between his father's desperate impersonation of success and the truth.
(When Charlie Babbitt goes home to the Midwest for his est...)
When Charlie Babbitt goes home to the Midwest for his estranged father's funeral, he learns not only that he's been cut out of his inheritance, but that he has a grown brother...Raymond...who has been sheltered almost all of his life in an East Coast institution for the developmentally disabled.
(Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman star in this present-da...)
Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman star in this present-day story aboutArmy medical researchers racing against the clock to stem the outbreak of a fast-spreading deadly virus.
(A television journalist is banished to a backwater statio...)
A television journalist is banished to a backwater station for bad behavior on the job. He meets a security guard and two form a bond which changes the course of their lives forever.
(After being caught in a scandalous situation days before ...)
After being caught in a scandalous situation days before the election, the president does not seem to have much of a chance of being re-elected. One of his advisors (Deniro) contacts a top hollywood producer (Hoffman) in order to manufacture a war in Albania that the president can heroically end, all through mass media.
(Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson star a...)
Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson star as a group of scientists recruited by the Navy to conduct a secret underwater mission to explore an alien spaceship.
(When Mr. Magorium (Hoffman), the proprietor of a magical ...)
When Mr. Magorium (Hoffman), the proprietor of a magical toy store where all the toys are alive, announces that he will at long last hand over the reigns of his empire to his faithful cashier (Portman), the store decides to throw an unusual tantrum.
(In 18th-century France lived Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, wh...)
In 18th-century France lived Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who was born with a great sense of smell. But as his gift becomes an obsession, he strives to create the most intoxicating perfume in the world by murdering young women to capture their essence.
(At a home for retired opera singers, the annual concert t...)
At a home for retired opera singers, the annual concert to celebrate Verdi is disrupted by the arrival of Jean (Maggie Smith), an eternal diva and the former wife of one of the residents.
(Jon Favreau leads a hilarious all-star cast in this inspi...)
Jon Favreau leads a hilarious all-star cast in this inspiring comedy about a gifted chef who teams up with his ex-wife, best friend and son to launch a food truck business.
Dustin Hoffman is an American actor known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable types. Hoffman is particularly known for his roles in such films as Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Papillon, Lenny, Marathon Man, All the President's Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man, Hook, and Wag the Dog.
Background
Ethnicity:
Hoffman is from an Ashkenazi Jewish family of immigrants from Ukraine and Romania.
Hoffman was born on August 8, 1937 in Los Angeles, California, the second son of Lillian (née Gold) and Harry Hoffman, a furniture salesman. Hoffman has a brother, Ronald, a lawyer and an economist.
Education
Hoffman graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955 and enrolled at Santa Monica College with the intention of studying medicine. He left after a year to join the Pasadena Playhouse. He also took classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City.
Hoffman began acting at age 19. He then moved to New York City, where he struggled for several years in odd jobs and eventually landed small parts on television and leading roles Off-Broadway, where he won an Obie Award.
After appearing in one forgettable Spanish-Italian coproduction, Hoffman was cast in his second film, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate (1967), beating out contemporaries Robert Redford and Charles Grodin. Hoffman was 30 years old when he played the 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock, an upper-middle-class college graduate who, in a search for a meaningful future, aimlessly drifts into an affair with a married woman who is the age of his parents. A tremendously successful social comedy, the film struck a nerve with youthful audiences disenchanted with the American establishment, and Hoffman was launched as a star.
In John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, which won an Academy Award for best picture of 1969, Hoffman played "Ratso" Rizzo, a tubercular homeless man who develops a friendship with an unsuccessful male prostitute (played by Jon Voight). Grim and downbeat in its depiction of a heartless New York City, the film was another unlikely success for Hoffman.
The actor moved smoothly into the 1970s playing numerous antiheroes such as the powerless witness to Native American genocide in Little Big Man (1970), the cowardly mathematician who violently defends his home in Straw Dogs (1971), the self-destructive comic Lenny Bruce in Lenny (1974), and an ex-convict who cannot resist the lure of crime in Straight Time (1978). The decade also saw Hoffman playing journalist Carl Bernstein as he and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) investigate the Watergate scandal in All the President’s Men (1976).
Thrice previously nominated for the Oscar, Hoffman finally won a best actor award for his sympathetic portrayal of a divorced single father in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and earned another nomination for Tootsie (1982), in which he played an out-of-work actor who, while masquerading as a woman, finds steady employment on a daytime soap opera.
Two returns to the stage proved great triumphs for Hoffman in the 1980s. First was his much-lauded performance as Willy Loman in the 1984 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which was adapted for television the following year by CBS and earned Hoffman an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Always determined to select a challenging variety of roles, he next appeared on stage in London as Shylock in Sir Peter Hall’s production of The Merchant of Venice (1989). For his film work, Hoffman closed out the decade with another best actor Oscar for his convincing depiction of a middle-aged autistic savant in Rain Man (1988). Not unlike Hoffman’s earlier roles, Rain Man’s Raymond Babbitt is a difficult character to embrace because of his emotionless nature, but the actor elicits just the right amount of sympathy from an audience.
After a disappointing series of big-budget Hollywood projects such as Hook (1991), Billy Bathgate (1991), Hero (1992), Outbreak (1995), and Sphere (1998), the actor returned to form as a sleazy, fame-hungry Hollywood producer who co-conspires to fool the entire world into believing that the United States is at war with Albania in Wag the Dog (1997), a biting political satire that gave Hoffman his seventh Academy Award nomination. He later portrayed the grand inquisitor in the French production of Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), and in 2003 he appeared in the courtroom thriller Runaway Jury. In 2004 he starred opposite Lily Tomlin in I Heart Huckabees, a comedy about a husband-and-wife detective team that helps clients solve their existential problems, and with Robert De Niro in the broad comedy Meet the Fockers.
Hoffman’s subsequent films include Stranger Than Fiction (2006) and the children’s fantasy Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (2007). Hoffman and Stranger Than Fiction costar Emma Thompson played lonely strangers who fall in love in Last Chance Harvey (2008). He reprised his Meet the Fockers role in its sequel, Little Fockers (2010), and later appeared as the title character’s father in the dark comedy Barney’s Version (2010). In addition, Hoffman lent his voice to the computer-animated films The Tale of Despereaux (2008), Kung Fu Panda (2008), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), and Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016).
Shifting his focus to television, Hoffman starred as an ex-con gambler on the HBO series Luck (2011–12), a drama set in the world of professional horse racing. He returned to the big screen as a restaurant owner in Chef (2014) and then appeared in the television adaptation Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot (2015), based on a children’s book about a bachelor romancing his tortoise-loving neighbour (Judi Dench). In 2017 he starred in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), playing a sculptor preparing for a retrospective of his work in New York.
In 2012, at the age of 75, Hoffman made his debut as a film director with Quartet, an ensemble comedy about former opera singers residing in an English retirement home.
(When Mr. Magorium (Hoffman), the proprietor of a magical ...)
2007
Religion
Hoffman's upbringing was non-religious, and he has said, "I don't have any memory of celebrating holidays growing up that were Jewish", and that he had "realized" he was Jewish at around age 10.
Hoffman said that he was subjected to anti-Semitism growing up in the Los Angeles area. It made him "deny" his Jewishness. "During a long stretch of my formative, pre-teen years I lived in what I would call an anti-Semitic neighborhood. I got a few "dirty Jews" and got beat up a couple of times. It was substantial enough for me to always deny my being Jewish as I was growing up. If someone asked me what religion I was, I would pretend I didn’t understand the question. I’d say 'I’m American.'"
Hoffman’s two sons and two daughters have all become a bar or bat mitzvah.
Politics
A political liberal, Hoffman has long supported the Democratic Party and Ralph Nader. In 1997, he was one of a number of Hollywood stars and executives to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl protesting against the treatment of Scientologists in Germany, which was published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune.
Views
Quotations:
"One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed."
"Blame is for God and small children."
"I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast feed."
"In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win."
Personality
In Hollywood, Hoffman gained the glory of a chameleon – an actor reincarnating in almost anyone. Hoffman has an irrepressible passion for studying the proposed character, fully getting into the image, demonstrating a passion for analysis and a mentor’s desire to share his knowledge with others. For each scenario, he writes his notes on how to interpret his role, and often they exceed the scenario by volume.
Physical Characteristics:
Short in stature and not typically handsome, he helped to usher in a new Hollywood tradition of average-looking but emotionally explosive leading men. His height is 5’ 6” (167 cm) and weight is 178 pounds (81 kg).
Playing a student-historian and runner in the film Marathon, Dustin Hoffman had not only to starve. At that time, the actor was rather slim and toned, but he had to lose 7 kilograms for shooting. For this reason, every day in the course of preparation the actor used to run for 6 kilometers.
Hoffman was successfully treated for cancer in 2013.
Interests
Politicians
Ralph Nader
Sport & Clubs
tennis
Athletes
Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario
Music & Bands
Hoffman initially hoped to become a classical pianist, having studied piano.
Connections
Hoffman married Anne Byrne in May 1969. He adopted Karina (b. 1966), Byrne's child from a previous marriage, and with Byrne had a daughter Jenna (born October 15, 1970). The couple divorced in 1980.
Hoffman then married businesswoman Lisa Gottsegen in October 1980; they have four children – Jacob Edward, Rebecca Lillian, Maxwell Geoffrey, and Alexandra Lydia "Ali".
1968, Most Promising Newcomer - The Graduate (1967)
1980, Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1983, Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical - Tootsie (1982)
1986, Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television - Death of a Salesman (1985)
1989, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Rain Man (1988)
1968, Most Promising Newcomer - The Graduate (1967)
1980, Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1983, Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical - Tootsie (1982)
1986, Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television - Death of a Salesman (1985)
1989, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Rain Man (1988)