“I grew up as an object in my particular home life,” Hoffman says. “I was not individualized. I had a brother who had his own difficulties, but he was the A-student, a varsity football player. I was the so-called sickly child, and somehow made to feel — not worthless, worse than that. Not even there. . . . I was stunned one day in therapy that the first time I had a sense of myself was when I was playing someone else.”
Dustin Hoffman loves to talk. And he’s an avid, voraciously interested listener. His easy, confiding manner turns a one-hour lunch into a 21
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2-hour gabfest between new best friends, with Hoffman casually picking at a companion’s salad, idly looking at two women dining farther down the banquette and wondering why men can’t achieve the same level of intimacy with one another. (“Elliptical is a nice way of putting it,” he says, describing his conversational style.) He professes not to have many close friends, but he’s devoted to his wife, Lisa, who shares his warm, cozily appointed office across the street, where she conducts business for Lisa Hoffman Beauty, a line of scent-diffusing jewelry. (Hoffman wears one of her black beaded bracelets, which emanates occasional whiffs of peppery Japanese agarwood.) Their four children, and two daughters from Hoffman’s previous marriage, are all satisfactorily launched. Although he has been on the festival circuit with “Quartet” over the past few months, he says, "I love being at home.”
It’s not uncommon for Hoffman to fight back tears when he talks. He almost weeps when he explains his creative process as an actor. “I know when I’ve done bad work, there are certain essential things I haven’t done,” he says. “The most essential thing is, I’m not behind it. If it’s not me behind it, then it’s s---. Then it’s just a character. The work that you’re doing, whether it’s the limp or the way you’re talking or whatever, you’re behind it.” He pauses, and his voice begins to tremble. “You’re not there to play the [jerk], you’re there to show the [jerk] that’s in you. Don't you dare say to an audience, ‘That’s not me, that’s just a character I’m playing.’ I resent it.”
Another thing Hoffman resents? Taking the work for granted. “What I don't understand are the actors who come to work not being prepared, not wanting to be prepared,” he says, declining to name names. “There’s an inner fury that’s going in me. I’m saying, ‘You’re so . . .lucky to be doing this. Ten percent of us aren’t working at any given time, what are you doing here if you don’t love it?’”
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