Two-time Academy Award winner and seven-time nominee Dustin Hoffman P'07 confessed to a packed audience Saturday night that he was "a failure."
"A Conversation with Dustin Hoffman," sponsored by the Creative Arts Council and set in the Pizzitola Sports Center, began with the actor's insistence that he was "not a lecturer." He defined a lecturer as a teacher, someone who knows. "I never did and still don't know," he said.
The event was moderated by Michael Ovitz P'05, co-founder of the Creative Artists Agency.
Hoffman, who did not graduate from college, said he took an acting class during his brief time at a community college after a friend informed him, "Nobody flunks acting. It's like gym."
So began a lifetime of on-screen and on-stage achievements. And for all his talk of failure, Hoffman appeared, at 67 years old, a man rich with experience.
The self-proclaimed "authentic ignoramus" began the evening with a quote from poet e.e. cummings and ended it, in tears, with a quote on art appreciation from Rainer Maria Rilke.
His conversation was layered with words of advice for aspiring actors, entertaining Hollywood anecdotes - like the time he fooled fellow actor Jon Voight while dressed like a woman for his role in "Tootsie" - and commentary on everything from the presidential election to the notion of original sin.
Hoffman, who grew up in Los Angeles before moving to New York to pursue acting, said in response to a question from the audience that if he weren't an actor he would probably be a director. One of his first on-stage appearances was in a Gertrude Stein play at Sarah Lawrence College.
A student from the audience asked Hoffman how he, in his early twenties, could hope to perform with all the knowledge and experience of his elders. Hoffman, in response, pointed to Marlon Brando's acclaimed performance, at only 29 years old, in "On the Waterfront."
A lot happens in your twenties, he said, referring to the Friday night keynote lecture by Chris Matthews P'05. "I always tell my kids it's the question-mark decade." He also recommended turning to the "big guys and the big gals" of literature, which is how he "got a taste of what (he) was really going to feel emotionally" when he was older."
His talk was filled with other words of wisdom for up-and-coming artists. Hoffman, a father of six, said he shapes his on-screen characters by considering first what they are not. "I think in acting, like in life, you keep chipping away at what you don't like," he said.
His experience dressing as a woman in "Tootsie" taught him much about the female experience. Noting that he was able to pick out his own breast size for the part, he said, "You want to feel in-scale. You want to feel attractive. You want to feel sexy. You do. Believe me."
He then related a particularly moving experience he had on the set of "Tootsie" when, in costume as a woman, he was approached by a group of men. After looking Hoffman up and down, the men summarily "erased" him, turning their attention to younger and more attractive women. Hoffman said the shock of the experience sent him crying to his wife, to whom he confessed that he'd done that to women before. "I was brought up that way. I had to have trophy girls," he said.
He also pointed to the wide criticism of President George W. Bush, who he said was "not dumb" but was also "not intellectual" or introspective. "We are a flawed species," he said. He was quick to add, however, that he was a Kerry supporter.
In an interview with The Herald before the event, Hoffman said he found he had much in common with politicians. "They wear the same kind of makeup I do when I'm working. They have the same costume designers fitting them for colors. They have better writers than I do."
"And what's marvelous is that the politicians act like they own (writers' lines) - like an actor is supposed to," he said. He found it interesting that politicians could use their political status to, in a sense, become entertainers.
"We know the actor's the actor," he said. "The actor is out there telling you, 'I'm lying. I'm not really this character.'" In contrast, the politician "is one of the great liars," Hoffman said - but also therefore one of the great actors.
"The bottom line for a politician is to be elected and then re-elected," Hoffman said, referring to an idea put forward by political theorist Noam Chomsky. The desire to be re-elected, he said, causes politicians' frequent hedging. "It's by nature, I think, disingenuous," he said. "More and more in my lifetime."
Moving to something a little less serious, Hoffman told The Herald that "God has already shifted his affection" from the Yankees to the Red Sox. "We'll see if he puts on a Red Sox jersey or not," he added.
Kristen Greider '08 said she thought Hoffman "was very truthful" and she appreciated his use of "raw imagery." She referred to his use of the image of an umbilical cord when speaking about the difficulty of divorce in response to a question about "Kramer vs. Kramer." Recalling how his own experience with divorce informed the development of the movie, Hoffman said a relationship that connects two people in love cannot easily be cut off, even when both parties want it to end.
Joe Gosha '75 said that Hoffman "capsulized in two or three sentences what it takes most actors years and years to learn" when he spoke about the power of "being in the moment."
"Seeing his passion at this event instructs me as to why he is so powerful as an actor," Gosha said.
Spencer Golub P'05, chair of the Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance, and Michael Silverman, chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media, presented Hoffman with the Creative Arts Council's Distinguished Visiting Artist Award for his portrayal of "the marginalized eccentric, the social outcast and the modern everyman."
The event was organized by Michael Ovitz P'05 and Kimberly Ovitz '05, who wanted to bring real artists of different types to campus as a resource for students in the arts.
Hoffman ended the evening by apologizing to President Ruth Simmons, who sat looking very amused in the front row. "I'm sorry I'm a bad boy sometimes," he said, in reference to his semi-scandalous Hollywood stories. "At some point we'll have a drink and we'll go out and boogie," he promised.
