Dustin Hoffman's success was long in coming. He supported himself with an assortment of jobs, such as weaving Hawaiian leis, working in a mental institution, and the ever-popular waiting on tables. Meanwhile, he slowly made his reputation in the theater with roles in such productions as Harry, Noon, and Night, The Journey of the Fifth Horse (for which he won the coveted Obie Award), and Eh? His success in the last of these led to his first film role, in The Tiger Makes Out (1967), for which he received 19th billing. Soon thereafter he played the lead in a low-budget Spanish/Italian coproduction, Madigan's Millions, a film that wasn't released in the United States until 1970, after both Dustin Hoffman and another actor in the movie, JON VOIGHT, became big stars. Eh? also led to the biggest break in Dustin Hoffman's career.
Director MIKE NICHOLS saw him in the show and decided to cast him in his new film, The Graduate (1967). Dustin Hoffman was paid $17,000 to play Benjamin Braddock in what became a blockbuster hit, instantly establishing Dustin Hoffman as a major new star and bringing him the first of his Oscar nominations. He proved his success was not a fluke by wowing the critics and the public with his portrayal of Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy (1969), garnering yet another nomination as Best Actor. Dustin Hoffman might have been a star with a loyal following, but he didn't choose conventional starring roles. Except for the contemporary love story John and Mary (1969), he has played such characters (in starring roles) as the 121-year-old Jack Crabb in Little Big Man (1970), the nerdy prisoner who befriends the STEVE MCQUEEN character in Papillon (1973), and a down-on-his-luck ex-con in Straight Time (1978).
The mid-1970s was Dustin Hoffman's most consistently successful period. Among the top box-office films in which he gave winning performances were the controversial SAM PECKINPAH movie Straw Dogs (1972); his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Lenny Bruce in Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974); the real-life political thriller in which he played Carl Bernstein, All the President's Men (1976); and his last hit of the 1970s, Marathon Man (1976). Having been nominated several times for Academy Awards, the actor was overdue when he finally won his Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer (1980). Had Ben Kingsley not taken the statuette for Gandhi in 1982, Dustin Hoffman might have won again for his tour de force in Tootsie (1982), one of the actor's most successful movies.
After Tootsie, he was not seen on the big screen for several years, having a smash success on Broadway as Willy Loman in an acclaimed revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, a production that was later adapted for television, with Dustin Hoffman recreating his role. When he finally returned to the movies, however, it was in the $50 million megaflop Ishtar (1987). Neither Dustin Hoffman nor his costar WARREN BEATTY were big enough box-office draws to compensate for the negative press of this mediocre comedy. But Dustin Hoffman quickly recouped in 1988 when he played the autistic savant brother of TOM CRUISE in Rain Man, a film that brought Dustin Hoffman his second Best Actor Oscar.
Dustin Hoffman performed a number of memorable smaller roles, such as Mumbles in WARREN BEATTY's Dick Tracy (1990). In 1991 he played Captain Hook in STEVEN SPIELBERG's Hook, and in 1999 Dustin Hoffman played the mysterious messenger or ministering angel or metaphysical shrink in Luc Besson's gory, seraphic, and loopy The Messenger: Joan of Arc (1999). Among Dustin Hoffman's best movie roles during the 1990s was his performance as Walter "Teach" Cole in the film adaptation of David Mamet's American Buffalo (1995). Dustin Hoffman earlier played gangster Dutch Schultz effectively in the Robert Benton adaptation of the E. L. Doctorow novel Billy Bathgate (1991). In Hero (1992) Dustin Hoffman helped director Stephen Frears satirize the state of television news by playing Bernie LaPlante, a crook facing jail time for dealing in stolen goods but nonetheless the real "hero" - he leads 54 airplane crash survivors to safety, though the Andy Garcia character gets the credit because he looks the part of a hero.
The same emphasis on the role of television and the media is found in Mad City (1997), in which Dustin Hoffman plays a journalist exploiting a hostage situation to further his career, directed by the political master, Constantin Costa-Gavras. That same year, Dustin Hoffman was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar in his role as a neurotic and ambitious television producer who cooperates with the military establishment to create the appearance of a real war in the Balkans in BARRY LEVINSON's Wag the Dog (1997). That same role won him a Golden Globe award. In 1999, for the first time, Dustin Hoffman produced a film in which he did not appear, A Walk on the Moon, but this was a commercial disappointment. Also in 1999, Dustin Hoffman received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
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