Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Lee Hoffman, born August 8, 1937, in Los Angeles, California, is an American actor and filmmaker whose career spans stage, film, and television. The younger of two sons born to Harry Hoffman, who worked as a prop supervisor at Columbia Pictures before becoming a furniture salesman, and Lillian Hoffman, née Gold, he was named after stage and silent screen actor Dustin Farnum. His family was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, with roots in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Iași, Romania. Hoffman has an elder brother, Ronald, who became a lawyer and economist.

Hoffman graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955 and enrolled at Santa Monica College intending to study medicine. Having devoted much of his youth to piano, he initially hoped to become a classical pianist, but an acting class he took at Santa Monica College redirected his ambitions. He left college to train at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he studied alongside future Academy Award winner Gene Hackman. He subsequently studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, becoming a committed method actor. After his time at the Pasadena Playhouse, Hoffman followed Hackman to New York City, where he and Hackman shared living quarters with Robert Duvall while all three pursued acting work through the early 1960s.

Hoffman made his Broadway debut in 1961 in A Cook for Mr. General. Through the mid-1960s he accumulated a range of stage credits, including an appearance in The Subject Was Roses on Broadway in 1965, for which he also served as stage manager under director Ulu Grosbard. He had previously assisted Grosbard as associate director on The Days and Nights of BeeBee Fenstermaker at the Sheridan Square Playhouse in 1962 and on a 1965 off-Broadway production of A View from the Bridge starring Robert Duvall and Jon Voight. In 1966, Hoffman appeared in the off-Broadway production of Eh? by Henry Livings at the Circle in the Square Theatre, a performance that earned him a Drama Desk Award.

His film debut came in 1967 with the black comedy The Tiger Makes Out, alongside Eli Wallach. That same year, director Mike Nichols cast him as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, a role that brought Hoffman his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, which he lost to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night. The Graduate established Hoffman as a major film presence, and he went on to receive additional Oscar nominations for Midnight Cowboy (1969), Lenny (1974), Tootsie (1982), and Wag the Dog (1997). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), in which he played a man navigating a divorce, and for Rain Man (1988), in which he portrayed an autistic savant. Among his other notable film roles are Little Big Man (1970), Papillon (1973), Marathon Man (1976), All the President's Men (1976), Ishtar (1987), Dick Tracy (1990), and Hook (1991).

In the 21st century, Hoffman appeared in Finding Neverland (2004), I Heart Huckabees (2004), Stranger than Fiction (2006), Meet the Fockers (2004), Little Fockers (2010), The Meyerowitz Stories (2017), and Megalopolis (2024). He provided voice performances in The Tale of Despereaux (2008) and the Kung Fu Panda film series beginning in 2008. In 2012, he made his directorial debut with the film Quartet.

Hoffman's Broadway career extended from 1961 through 1989. He starred in Jimmy Shine, for which he received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in 1969. In 1984, he took on the role of Willy Loman in a revival of Death of a Salesman, earning a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play that year as well as a Theatre World Award in 1967. He reprised the role of Willy Loman the following year in a television film adaptation, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. In 1989, Hoffman played Shylock in a Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice, a performance that earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play.

Across his career, Hoffman's accolades include two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Drama Desk Awards, and a Tony Award nomination. He received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1997, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999, and the Kennedy Center Honors Award in 2012.