Dustin Drives Down Memory Lane

Actor Dustin Hoffman Discusses His Life And Art With Steve Kroft

(CBS)  It's not easy to think of another actor who has made more great movies, or made more movies great.

Last November, as Correspondent Steve Kroft sat in his screening room, making him look at clips, actor Dustin Hoffman said it was like going through a family album.

"I don't know about you. But when you go back and look at early photographs of yourself or your family, and your kids are grown, it's sweet stuff and it's painful stuff. Isn’t it," says Hoffman. "Where did it go? Where did it go? And that's a similar feeling."

It’s a career no one could have predicted when Hoffman left his hometown of Los Angeles 46 years ago, and went to New York to become an actor. He was scrawny, with a big nose, and not in immediate demand -- and it didn’t seem to bother him.

"I was prepared for failure. In a sense, I was seeking failure. Because failure meant you weren't selling out in those days," says Hoffman. "Since then, I've had a lot of therapy, and I think I was making sure that I did not want to succeed in this life. I did not want to."

Hoffman shared apartments with a couple of other struggling actors: Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall.

"If God had reached down and said, 'Sign on the dotted line, and you guys will never be out of work. You'll only have supporting parts Off-Broadway for the rest of your life,' we would have signed like that," says Hoffman. "All you want is to be employed. You wanna practice your craft every day."

He took acting classes, bought his clothes at the Salvation Army and dined out on a steady diet of rejection. Trailing a crowd of admirers, he showed Kroft where he had his first gig on Broadway, working in the kitchen at a Howard Johnson. He lasted a week. Why did he get fired? "I didn't fit in," he says, laughing.

Not fitting in has been a dominant theme in Hoffman’s life. In fact, it has always been part of his appeal. And despite the adversity, he was not about to give up. "You cannot be in this because you think you're gonna make a living at it," says Hoffman. "You can only be in this. It's the only way you choose to survive."

It took Hoffman 10 years, but he finally built a reputation performing off-Broadway, winning awards and good notices, one of which caught the eye of director Mike Nichols, who was casting a new movie in 1967.

"I mean, I was a freak accident to get 'The Graduate,'" says Hoffman.

The role of Benjamin Braddock was written for someone tall, blond, and athletic. But Nichols saw something in the obscure, total unknown, and cast him against type as a neurotic, bumbling basket case, who is seduced by one of his mother’s friends.

Hoffman had no idea of what was about to happen to him. All he remembers is going to a sneak preview and seeing himself on film for the first time. "Apparently what I did, without realizing it, is I had a panic attack," says Hoffman. "My teeth started to chatter, so that people could hear it. ... It was a terrifying experience for me. It wasn't fun."

He waited for everyone to leave the theater, but in the lobby, he ran into a famous gossip columnist. "She points her cane at me. It's right out of Dickens. She's holding on the rail, and she says, 'You're Dustin Hoffman, aren't you,'" says Hoffman. "I said, 'Yeah.' She says, 'You were in that movie?' I said, 'Yes.' And she says, 'Your life will never be the same.'"

Was she right? "I guess," says Hoffman. "Yeah."

He earned his first Academy Award nomination for "The Graduate," but made only $17,000, and was back on the unemployment line by the time Life magazine came around to do a feature.

Women were also lining up outside his apartment, and he had to get a new telephone number. "I wasn't very happy," recalls Hoffman. "My plan wasn't working out."

He said he turned down a lot of offers immediately for films, and didn't work for a year – until "Midnight Cowboy" came along. It was a dark film, and it was a supporting role. Everyone told him not to do it. And what's more, the director, John Schlesinger, didn't want him playing the tubercular, homeless, Ratzo Rizzo.

But Hoffman prevailed. "What fuels me then and what fuels me now is, 'Oh, you don't think I'm any good? 'You don't think I can do that '" says Hoffman. "Revenge. There ain't nothing wrong with it."

He once said, "Movies are like life, everything depends on a few decisions you make at the very beginning." And Hoffman had set his course, making a career playing outsiders, underdogs, and anti-heroes.