Dustin Hoffman Says He Initially Took Up Acting In School To Bump Up His Grades

Before Dustin Hoffman became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable actors, he was a young student taking acting class for an easy grade.

The two-time Academy Award winner sat down with Sunday Sitdown host Willie Geist to chat about his new memoir “Look at Me.” During their conversation, Hoffman reflected on the unlikely beginnings of his acting career.

“My friend said, ‘Take acting, it’s like gym. Nobody flunks. You know, the worst you can get in gym is a C,’” Hoffman recounted to Willie.

What started as a way to earn a passing grade quickly turned into something bigger.

“And I took this acting class because I would get a C. And suddenly, I have to do a scene. And I have to memorize it. And I am lost in time,” he said.

For Hoffman, the experience was unlike anything he had felt before.

“When I practiced the piano — it was a clock, and I had to at least spend an hour a day, you know, practicing. And it was always by that clock and I hated it,” Hoffman recalled.

Acting, Hoffman said, was different.

“Anybody who loves their work — the clock does not exist,” he told Willie.

That unexpected discovery would eventually lead Hoffman to a career filled with many memorable Hollywood performances.

Hoffman’s breakthrough came in 1967 when he starred as Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate,” playing a recent college graduate struggling to figure out what comes next in life. The role helped launch Hoffman into stardom and established him as a leading actor in Hollywood.

From there, he continued to take on a wide variety of characters across a diverse body of work. Hoffman portrayed journalist Carl Bernstein opposite Robert Redford in “All the President’s Men,” played an actor who disguises himself as a woman in the comedy “Tootsie,” and brought the villainous Captain Hook to life in Steven Spielberg’s “Hook.”

His performances have also earned him some of the industry’s highest honors. Hoffman won his first Academy Award for best actor for his role in the 1979 drama “Kramer vs. Kramer,” followed by a second win for his performance opposite Tom Cruise in the 1988 film “Rain Man.”

From a class that launched an Oscar-winning career, Hoffman, now 89, is still going. And it sounds as though he’s got a couple more plans on the horizon.

“I exercise. I have an extraordinary marriage, extraordinary children, which not everybody has,” he told Willie. “And I have all these things going, so death better watch out.”