French films

Dustin Hoffman - biography

1937-
Biography
Dustin Hoffman photo
Dustin Hoffman is best-known for the following films:


Dustin Hoffman Quotes
“I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.”

“I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.”

“Lee Strasberg would say over and over again: ‘There’s no such thing as a juvenile or an ingenue or a villain or a hero or a leading man - we’re all characters.’”

“So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army.  But I can’t imagine how they had high hopes for me.”

“The hardest role for me would be something I had no interest in - in the worst script ever written.  Now, that would be a challenge.”

“The plight of the actor, even if he’s a star, is the plight of the women’s movement.  They’re saying the same thing to us: get into bed, give me a good time, then give me something to eat, go get the laundry, be a good girl and behave yourself and let us men get on with what counts.”

“We vote for a person: ‘Seems like he’s got integrity.’ An actor is trained a long time to fake integrity.”

“[Meryl Streep]’s going to be the Eleanor Roosevelt of acting.”

“Blame is for God and small children.”

“A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.”

“One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying.  Once you’re a star you’re dead already.  You’re embalmed.”

“The whole thrust has become a way of missiling the audience, of getting their money and giving them the least amount of quality.”

“And that’s another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.”

“Film is a personal effort, and if you fail you should fail for the right reasons - it’s the only way of growing.”

“God knows I’ve done enough crap in my life to grow a few flowers.”

“I did a movie called Marathon Man and it was one of my best memories.”

“I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.”

“If I met Dorothy - me as a woman [in Tootsie] - at a party, I’d turn her down.”

“Movies are seventy years old - an infant art form.”

“Well first of all, it’s hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.”

“If you stay in Beverly Hills too long, you become a Mercedes.”

“I lived below the official American poverty line until I was 31.”

“Life stinks, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy it.”

“My mother was such a movie fan she named me for her idol Dustin Farnum and my brother, Dr Ronald Hoffman, for her older favorite, Ronald Colman.”

“For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that that administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that’s reprehensible.”

“I know too many people who use it as a crutch.  Give us this day our daily analysts,”

“Stardom equals freedom.  It’s the only equation that matters.”

“If you have this enormous talent, it’s got you by the balls, it’s a demon.  You can’t be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal.  Dickens wasn’t that nice a guy.”

“I believe - though I may be wrong, because I’m no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.”

“If there is no direct threat why are we invading?”

“The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.”

“I envy people who can just look at a sunset.  I wonder how you can shoot it.  There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.”

“I feel cheated never being able to know what it’s like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast feed.”

“I mean, I don’t think I’m alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind’s eye.  You don’t think they were cute like every other baby?”

“I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I’d had before.  I thought I’d just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.”

“In my room as a kid...  I’d play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.”

“It’s too simple to say men and women are equal.  You can’t make equals of an apple and pear, they’re different.”

“Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.”

“Somehow I think it was declared very early on that I was the - if not the black sheep of the family, not a very good student.”

“There’s a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings.  I don’t understand, personally, how you can be bored.  I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don’t understand boredom.”

“Well this is aptly called a junket, for both of us.  I have never been to a house of prostitution, but I understand that you get in more than seven minutes.”

“What’s extraordinary is that I’ve never worked with this man [David Puttnam].  As far as I know, I’ve met him only three times, and yet he goes around saying these horrible things about me.”





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