But stardom began to break down, like so many other religions. In the Sixties and Seventies, young moviegoers rediscovered the great legends, many of whom had died. In the repertory theaters, the classic films had a new life. Kids were still thrilled by the melodramatic ego and the piercing eyes of Joan Crawford. In 1978, Joan was 74, unwell, and retired from the screen. She had no peace. In that year, her adopted daughter, Christina, published a book — Mommie Dearest — that rearranged the publishing world’s attitude to stars. Christina said mommie had been a raging tyrant of domestic order, violent, abusive and fit for ridicule. The book was badly written, and as desperate as any damaged child, but it sold about four million copies. The message sank in: stars might not be writers themselves, but beware the dangers in leaving the story to others.  

So what does Dustin Hoffman want from his book, Look at Me? I doubt he dreams of selling millions of copies. That scale is as archaic now as black-and-white. But in serious age, with a large family to give him approval, he wants — and deserves — respect and attention. “Attention must be paid” comes from one of Hoffman’s big ventures — doing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. To be humbled in a play can win enormous esteem.

One of the best-known anecdotes about Dustin Hoffman is the moment on the set of Marathon Man (1976) when his co-star, Laurence Olivier, growing weary of Dustin’s impassioned attempt to “get into” his character, responded with the acid observation, “Oh, why doesn’t the dear boy just act?” That has passed into show business lore as an example of casual English gamesmanship in the face of a dogged-if-not-humorless American Method-bound denial of reality: the plain fact that the actor is not, and need not be, the character. He is paid to pretend.

Hoffman’s short but revealing memoir does not comment on this remark. But he has his own jab at Lord Olivier. (The two players were innately competitive.) In the early shooting of Marathon Man — where Olivier is a vicious Nazi (remember his cruel dentistry) and Hoffman is the American victim-hero — Hoffman and the film’s director John Schlesinger were alarmed at what they saw as Olivier’s over-acting. They wondered: could they bring the world’s best known greatest actor down a few degrees?

More from this author

Digger: the flawed masterpiece we deserve

By David Thomson

At one point, Hoffman and Olivier were running their lines together — just reading them over for memorization — with Olivier getting bigger and bigger. So the wily Dustin wondered, “You know, we’ve done it so many different ways, maybe we should do one take like this, where we just say the words, as if it’s the two of us running lines.” 

“Are you saying I’m over the top?” demanded the lord of the stage. Hoffman denied that anxiety, and the two men became pals. So Hoffman admired what Olivier had done in The Entertainer by pretending in such naturalistic detail to be a third-rate comic in an English music hall. What had led Olivier to that pinnacle of excellence? Hoffman asked. Wasn’t it an urge to say something to the world?

“Bollocks,” replied Olivier. He thrust his head so close to Dustin they were almost nose to nose, and he whispered his confession. The energy in acting, its implacable drive, came in. It’s all about: “Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me.”

Dustin Hoffman will be 90 next August. Not that he has given up on youthfulness. As Lawrence Turman (the producer on The Graduate) once said, Dustin is reliable for goofiness and sweetness — and a comedic instinct. A lot of that springs from The Graduate (1967) where he was a strange version of the all-American young man, taken into some disturbing areas of underground desire, but still finally proclaimed as an adorable, tireless mensch in a movie that had that classic Hollywood knack of turning shit into gold. And which is still, probably, Hoffman’s best-known picture.

Not that he was ever a one-shot wonder. He has had seven nominations for the best actor Oscar — after The Graduate, there was Midnight Cowboy, Lenny, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man and Wag the Dog. And yes, he’s still here, still looking for work, aware of what is coming but challenging demise to diminish him.

So he does an autobiography, with the assistance of New Yorker writer Ariel Levy. (Between them, they do sound like him.) But they face stiff competition. Michael Douglas came out in the same season with a very candid book, One Helluva Ride. And only a few years ago, Al Pacino delivered Sonny Boy, which especially in its younger years was a complex and heartfelt story about growing up in New York. To listen to that book on tape, read by Pacino, was to believe that the actor had turned his life into one of his great parts. It’s as compelling as Bette Davis’s The Lonely Life (published in 1962 and still a landmark of the genre).

Look At Me doesn’t have that punch or pain. Pacino often sang about the past, whereas Hoffman just outlines his career. There was something in Pacino’s book that seemed inspired or captivated by revery and remembering. It felt emotionally necessary, whereas Hoffman’s book seems dutiful, despite the good stories and sharp insights. 

But Hoffman has been on hold a while now. His last nomination, Wag the Dog, was nearly 30 years ago, and it is one of his best pictures, though he had more a supporting role than the clear lead. He’s done nearly 40 films since then, including voice work on the Kung Fu Panda franchise, but little that might seem a proper challenge for a great actor. That leaves one asking, has Hoffman moved us or himself enough in the last 30 years?

The best thing in Look At Me is Hoffman’s account of The Graduate. He was never obvious casting for Charles Webb’s book, the hero of which is a thoroughly mainstream athlete in college suddenly uncertain about the rest of his life. In approaching the project, producer Turman and director Mike Nichols had tried some scenes with Robert Redford and Candice Bergen. That’s a long way from the film we still enjoy, and a measure of how far Nichols and his screenwriter, Buck Henry, were not satisfied with the novel’s concept. They felt the guy in the book was a stiff, and in Hoffman they detected a sympathetic awkwardness that really was in Dustin’s nature. Henry and Nichols had Benjamin Braddock start out nearly numb with anxiety — so he would seem seduced by the much older Mrs Robinson. (In fact, Anne Bancroft in that role was only six years older than Hoffman.)

As Hoffman describes it, he believed he was wrong for the picture. He tested but never thought he had a chance. Once cast, he felt increasing pressure from Nichols to accentuate his Jewishness. He was not just uneasy but uncertain what Nichols wanted. It’s a great insight now that Hoffman guesses how far Nichols (ostensibly a big smooth success) was himself torn about his own Jewishness and his feeling of loneliness.

There was a telling moment when he shook hands with Nichols, ashamed that his hand was wreathed in anxious sweat — and felt his director’s hand was in the same state. In truth, Nichols, Turman and Henry (maybe with foresight, but maybe finding their film in the dark) were feeling their way towards one of those American movies that would have its cake and eat it. One in which the flare of subversion and loner persistence actually fitted in with safe conventions of the ordinary. So Ben Braddock could have Mrs Robinson and her daughter — and the daughter (the perfect Katharine Ross) would still marry him happily. And he could walk off as a hero. The Graduate was a big hit — it’s very well done — but it pulls a cool trick in disguising plot elements that should have upset the audience. Like how much betrayal can a family take? And still, the picture was perceived as an assault on middle-class parental attitudes.

It’s remarkable how quickly the awkward novice became not just a star but a very accomplished pretender who had a series of tour de force roles — Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, Jack Crabb going from youth to 121 in Little Big Man, all the way to a moderately attractive “woman” in Tootsie and an autistic savant in Rain Man. Which other actor could have handled that range? It wasn’t just that he startled and excelled; it seemed that he needed the outlandish challenges. He was a Method actor, famously intent on digging into real nature with improvs that could alarm other actors. But there’s a corresponding truth that Dustin was seldom the plain Hoffman. There are exceptions: his Carl Bernstein in All the President’s Men is natural, smart, sardonic, and a master at cloaking his own ego. That film has many virtues but the way he and Redford play off each other is a masterly double act in which Carl seems nettled by, but envious of, Redford’s calm. Still, there aren’t too many films in which Hoffman is relaxed or brave enough to just be himself. 

One example of what he could do is a film seldom remarked on today: Straight Time (1978), in which he plays a man released from prison, a somber, plain guy, who thinks of going straight but is forever enclosed in gloominess. Hoffman intended at first to direct that film, but he found the load of acting and being in control too much, so a friend, Ulu Grosbard, took it over. 

Hoffman surely knew he was picking up a reputation for being difficult or demanding — a perfectionist. Some other actors found him hard to play with; that may mean his improvs were wild, or that he needed to find a path where others could not accompany him. On Kramer vs. Kramer, as he went through his own painful separation, he told the writer-director Robert Benton that their script didn’t grasp the full anguish of divorce. When director Sydney Pollack said a take was OK on Tootsie, Dustin told him, not for me. He was a big arguer on set, and one can hear him being “difficult” in just the way Ratso harangues traffic on the street in Midnight Cowboy.

The addict may act like a victim, but he goes in fear of being cured. Doing a book may be therapy for an actor as well as a way to respect. But I suspect most stars would trade away the book tours and the sales figures for just 10 minutes in a juicy role. Maybe the old guys are doing their books just to let the world know they are available. What we need to appreciate is that every out-of-work actor is desperate. “Just resting” is a danger sign. So old actors write books to pretend they’re still “on”.