Dustin Hoffman Looks Back

Few actors have disappeared into as many unforgettable characters as Dustin Hoffman.

He has been the drifting college graduate seduced by Mrs. Robinson, a penniless con man surviving on the streets of New York, a 121-year-old recounting a life spanning the Wild West to Little Big Horn, an infamous forger plotting an escape alongside Steve McQueen, a reporter exposing Richard Nixon’s crimes with Robert Redford, a father learning to raise his son after being left by his wife, an out-of-work actor masquerading as a woman, an autistic savant and Captain Hook.

Across six decades, more than 60 films and five Broadway plays, Hoffman has created more iconic characters than just about any actor of his generation. Appearing opposite Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, Anne Bancroft, Warren Beatty, Gene Hackman, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone and Johnny Depp, he has earned seven Academy Award nominations, winning two, along with four BAFTA Awards, five Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Kennedy Center Honor.

At the launch of his memoir, Look at Me, Hoffman reflects on growing up as the “family failure” before becoming one of Hollywood’s defining actors, breaking the mold of the leading man, discovering his Jewish ancestry after being raised in a family estranged from its roots, collaborating with generations of cinematic legends and his perspective, nearing age 90, on America’s changing zeitgeist.

The legendary actor, whose arrival in Hollywood helped usher in a new and revitalized approach to filmmaking, Dustin Hoffman continues to add singular performances to a career rich with characters that have obliterated the line previously dividing the archetypes of “character actor” and “leading man.” He plans to live to be at least a hundred years of age, and he does not plan to retire. Ever.

Hoffman will be in conversation with Ariel Levy, his collaborator on Look at Me, who is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author, most recently, of The Rules Do Not Apply.