A Talented “Graduate”: 10 Great Dustin Hoffman Films

Everyone who interviews Dustin Hoffman leaves with the same impression: he’s warm, intelligent, and accommodating. His small physical stature – there’s only 5ft 6in of the man – is dismissed by a presence that fills the room. He is a complete part of the Hollywood furniture: iconic and recognisable in both looks and voice. He is Tinseltown gold and a legend of the film industry.

As a child, one of my favourite films was Hook. As a pre-teen I didn’t concern myself with actor’s names, nor did I really distinguish one actor from another. They were simply the characters. In Hook, Hoffman filled the screen with a swashbuckling sense of cartoonish nastiness.

He was the best thing about an oddly misjudged and overtly sentimental attempt at reinventing the Peter Pan story. He twitched his whisker moustache and glared with contempt at any person under the age of fifteen, genuinely finding menace in the light-hearted setting.

He followed Hook with another light-hearted comedy, playing the unlikely saviour to stricken passengers after a plane crash. Known as Accidental Hero in the UK (it was just “Hero” in America), Hoffman’s petty criminal Bernie Laplante saves the lives of many including news reporter Gale Gayley (Geena Davis).

Wary of media attention unearthing a checkered past, Laplante sees homeless man John Bubber (Andy Garcia) take responsibility for his heroic actions. It’s a better film than given credit for – biting in its humour, and boasting a strong satirical swing at the hypocrisy of the media. It’s also rather forward thinking in its depiction of celebrity and tabloid sensationalism, especially in light of reality television.

But why am I talking about Accidental Hero? Well, it echoes Hoffman’s own introduction to the world of film.

Dustin Hoffman: The Accidental Movie Star

Actor Dustin Hoffman in 1969 with his daughter.

By his own admission he was the accidental movie star, his stardom exploding in 1967 thanks to the release of The Graduate. In the early 1960s when a twenty-something Dustin Hoffman was plying his trade on off-Broadway plays, there as no call in Hollywood for his brand of movie star. He was short, thin, lacking the strong jaw and clean-cut appeal of McQueen and Newman. Stardom was a distant dream and it wasn’t until he’d passed the age of thirty that he finally landed his big break.

Mel Brooks had initially cast him as the Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind in The Producers which Hoffman was excited about since he idolised Brooks. But he had to turn the part down after Mike Nichols made him an offer to play lead Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate.

The film brought Hoffman the recognition he craved. It also turned out to be friend and roommate Gene Hackman’s career-maker. Hackman was due to play Anne Bankcroft’s husband but was fired early in pre-production. His sudden availability brought him to the attention of Warren Beatty who cast him in Bonnie and Clyde.

Hoffman says the experience of working with Nichols was tough but educational. “Nichols is very demanding,” says the actor, but “we all learned from him.”

Nichols spent a lot of time rehearsing the actors which Hoffman says was at times “excruciating”. However, he acknowledges that Nichols is a truly great film director.

“He took me aside one day when I was tired and probably not focusing well on the scene, looked deep inside my eyes and said, ‘You’re never going to get the chance to do this scene again as long as you live, and you’re going to see it one day up there on the screen.’” It was good advice.

Hoffman would be nominated for an Academy Award for the film, the first of four within twelve years, eventually winning in 1979 for his role in Kramer Versus Kramer.

It was reward for his hours spent at the famed Actors Studio and tireless work on the off-Broadway theatre circuit, as well vindication for his use of method acting. For Hoffman though, Hollywood’s calling was a ticket home; perhaps it was written in the stars that the Los Angeles-born actor would end up in the town’s most lucrative and eye-catching industry.

Dustin Hoffman’s best films

10. Lenny

Dir. Fosse (1974)

Considered by many US-based critics as a film lacking the sort of anti-establishment relish that made its origin of study the darling of counter-culture 1950s and 1960s Americana, Lenny plays better in the United Kingdom as a result.

British mainstream media is more open to the real meaning of the comedian’s “blah blah blah” skit and other obscene eccentricities. Frequently, we see Hollywood actors, musicians, and comic stars appear on talk shows, looking aghast at the host’s use of the F-word, or more explicit allusions to sex, homosexuality, and drug use.

9. Kramer Versus Kramer

Dir. Benton (1979)

Kramer Versus Kramer was lavishly praised on its release in 1979. It features one of Hoffman’s most reserved and natural performances and he, along with co-star Meryl Streep, won Academy Awards for best actor and best actress in a supporting role respectively. The film also won Academy Awards for best film, best director, and best screenplay.

It was a film of its time but its message is still resonant today. Seeking to draw light on the changing cultural shift occurring in late 1970s America, Kramer Versus Kramer tells of the struggle when the American dream breaks down.

It also takes to task the traditional role of the father, and how single parenthood can impinge on both work and child-parent relationships. The film gives equal weight to both the mother and father’s role, challenging the idea that mothers are automatically considered as the favoured parent in custody battles.

8. All The President’s Men

Dir. Pakula (1976)

A film that continues to resonate culturally, politically and socially today, this true story of Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) uncovering the Watergate Scandal is a wonderful example of the beneficial role of news media, the courage of journalists to put everything on the line for the truth, and the importance to question those in authority, especially those charged with running the country. All The President’s Men is even more successful thanks to Redford teaming with Hoffman, two of Hollywood’s greatest actors in tandem.

7. Rain Man

Dir. Levinson (1988)

Rain Man gave Dustin Hoffman his second Oscar for best actor, playing an autistic savant alongside on-screen brother Tom Cruise. Some criticised his performance as over-the-top but I have always felt it is one of his most disciplined.

Like Ratso Rizzo and Louis Dega, Hoffman so embodies the character you forget you’re watching one of the most recognisable Hollywood stars.

6. Marathon Man

Dir. Schlesinger (1976)

Known for the infamous torture scene in a dentist’s chair, John Schlesinger’s sparkling thriller is a test of your nerve from start to finish. It’s also notable for Hollywood heavyweights Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman appearing on scree together.

Hoffman is grad student Babe Levy who gets unwittingly drawn into a plot by a Nazi war criminal to retrieve stolen diamonds. Olivier is chilling and steals the show; indeed, he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance. It’s why this is, by extension, one of Hoffman’s most memorable outings.

5. Papillon

Dir. Schaffner (1973)

This powerful and affecting prison drama boasts stand out performances from both Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. McQueen gets more screen time but its testament to Hoffman’s ability that he outshines the “great escapee” in their scenes together.

Gaining a real sense of credibility thanks to its basis in the autobiography by the French convict Henri Charrière, Papillon is technically accomplished stage for the human spirit to shine amidst the institutions designed to break it.

4. Tootsie

Dir. Pollack (1982)

Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.

A generation – my own – actually believed for years that Robin Williams was the best cross-dressing comic actor and Mrs. Doubtfire was the funniest film of all time. Thankfully, time is good for at least one thing: knowledge. I found Tootsie on late-night TV and have never looked back.

Hoffman showed his versatility in 1982 with this comic turn as struggling actor Michael Dorsey who, having failed to get a decent role on television as a male, dresses up as a woman and auditions for a female role, curiously getting the part on soap opera “Southwest General”. Hoffman was again nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards but failed to win.

3. Midnight Cowboy

Dir. Schlesinger (1969)

Undeniably one of Dustin Hoffman’s finest performances, his appearance in John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy as Ratso Rizzo is heartbreaking in its vulnerable portrayal of a crippled New York con-man. Hoffman should have won his first Academy Award for the film but had to resign himself to a nomination alongside co-star Jon Voight.

Rarely has a performance touched me as much as Hoffman’s in Midnight Cowboy. The conclusion to the troubled life of Ratso is profoundly moving.  Midnight Cowboy is an immersive, brilliantly executed film but it transcends mere superlatives and emerges as one of the greatest American movies of all time thanks to the genius of Hoffman.

2. Straw Dogs

Dir. Peckinpah (1971)

“I don’t know my way home,” says simpleton Henry Niles to a dishevelled David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) at the end of Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece Straw Dogs. David, with one lens of his spectacles broken and cuts and bruises to his face, smiles and calmly replies: “That’s okay, I don’t either.”

The two men drive towards the little Cornish village nearby, their futures uncertain. It’s a poetic and fitting climax to David’s story – a man who arrived in the intimately scaled, unassuming English village timid and withdrawn, concerned more with his work than his restless, lascivious wife, and who leaves having found a bravery, or indeed an anger, he did not know he possessed.

In my favourite Sam Peckinpah film, Hoffman as David, a mathematician, seeks the solitude of a small English town to continue his work having received a grant. It’s where his wife Amy grew up and she has a now-vacant family home they can live in. For him, a man who values calculated control, it appears to be a perfect fit for them both. However, he could not be more wrong.

Straw Dogs is a powerful and brilliant deconstruction and exploration of the human condition in the face of provocation. It is one of the most affecting movie experiences one can have, and one of the most rewarding. In some ways Peckinpah, by 1971, was a Hollywood exile who arrived in the UK unsure of his next project. We can only be thankful for this studio-imposed injustice – Straw Dogs is his greatest achievement.

1. The Graduate

Dir. Nichols (1967)

Dustin Hoffman’s first foray into the world of film is still his shining achievement. This tale of a recently graduated young man trying to find his place in life under the constant strain of overbearing parents is given just the right doe-eyed, idealism-in-the-dark vitality required by an equally bemused Hoffman. The film marks the actor’s first Academy Award nomination.

Hoffman is Benjamin Braddock, a 21-year-old in the middle of an existential crisis in which his future is being eagerly plotted by his parents and their establishment society yet he feels aloof and disengaged, unwilling to follow their lead but unable to plot his own journey.

That is until his eyes are opened by the sensual Mrs Robinson, an older woman who seduces him, before things get complicated when he falls in love with her daughter.

If you enjoyed our look at the best Dustin Hoffman movies, you may enjoy our look at the actor’s best performances. 

Top 10 Dustin Hoffman Performances

Top 10 Films takes a look at the finest performances of Hollywood legend Dustin Hoffman whose appearances in movies such as Lenny, Midnight Cowboy & Tootsie remain some of the most memorable of contemporary American cinema.