Double Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman tells Michael Dwyerabout the four decades since he broke into the big time with 'The Graduate'
It's a hectic Friday afternoon at the Dorchester hotel in London. The room designated as the holding area for the international media is so full that the Sony Pictures people have to open another to cope with the overflow while they juggle the schedules of the Stranger than Fictioncast - Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman - its director, Marc Forster, and its young screenwriter, Zach Helm. Everything is running over, and then their overlapping schedules have to be synchronised to get them all together for a press conference. Having exhausted the views of Hyde Park across the road, I have started my third sudoku when word comes that Mr Hoffman will see me now, more than an hour late.
He enters the room and apologises profusely, then settles into an armchair and asks if the glass of water on the table is for him. "It's been prepoured, just as Ms Thompson's cigarettes are presmoked in the movie, I explain, borrowing the sarcastic response of Thompson's character, a novelist, when a publishing associate played by Queen Latifah notes an ashtray full of butts and asks if she smoked all of them.
Stranger than Fictionis a smart, intriguing and appealing serious comedy. It introduces its protagonist, Harold Crick (Ferrell), as a lonely government tax auditor whose meticulously ordered daily routine falls apart when he realises that he is a character in a novel - and that the novelist plans to kill him in the final chapter. The offbeat consequences involve a left-wing young baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and a literary theorist, Professor Jules Hilbert (Hoffman), who just happens to double as a lifeguard.
Surely a screen first, I suggest. "I think the author wrote the character like that to get the laugh, and he gets the laugh," says Hoffman, who plays the part perfectly deadpan and infuses the movie with vital warmth. "I have to give credit to the director," he says, "because he set the tone he wanted. It's quite a surreal film. Here are all of us actors in what we would call an ensemble, and yet the film is very much sectioned, and we rarely meet each other even though we're all acting in the same movie."
It's a definitive serious comedy in that it's very funny but tender, too, as it reflects on the stresses of modern life and on Crick's lack of self-belief. "It's rare when a film manages to be truly funny and truly serious," Hoffman says. "The writer really got it. I was taken by it from the very first page in the script. By the time I finished reading it I was overcome with emotion. It's rare to find a script that has even half the weight that this one has."
It's Helm's first screenplay to go before the cameras, and it follows in the recent tradition of bright young writers and directors who look at life from imaginative, differently skewed angles - notably David O Russell, who directed Hoffman in I Heart Huckabees, two years ago, and Charlie Kaufman, who scripted Being John Malkovich, Adapationand Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Is this a generational thing? "I'm not an expert on art, although, God knows, I wish I was," Hoffman says, "but I think it has happened in many art forms. I was told that the reason why the cubist movement started in art was because photography threatened the representation of people in portraits. Suddenly, there was photography, and artists felt they might be out of business, so they decided they had to approach painting in a different style. I think that maybe it's the same with Kaufman and Russell and Zach Helm: that they feel we've said everything that we can say in film in a traditional narrative fashion. This generation is trying to find a different way of saying things, and, in a way, it's a kind of cubist approach to film-making."
Hoffman first worked with Forster three years ago, when they made Finding Neverland. When they reunited for Stranger than FictionForster declared: "I had fallen in love with Dustin and wanted to continue the romance." Was this reciprocated? "Oh, that's demonstrable," Hoffman says. "After Finding Neverland I told him that, whenever he was making another film, to let me know and I'd do it without even reading the script. He said he would hold me to that, and, sure enough, he called me up and said: 'I've got my next film. Yes or no?' I said yes, and I got lucky because it's such a good script."
Hoffman continues his association with Helm in Helm's first film as a director, Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium. "It was frightening to see him at work on the set," Hoffman says. "He's very young, around 31, and you would never think he had not directed a film before this. I don't think I've ever seen a director who was so relaxed, and certainly not a first-time director. He had a basketball hoop brought on to the parking lot outside the set in Toronto, and I would see him shooting baskets in between set-ups. He was that relaxed, even though we had a tough schedule. He has an inner confidence."
In Helm's fantasy film, Hoffman plays the eponymous Edward Magorium, the eccentric owner of an extraordinary toy store where the toys come to life when infused by his spirit. After running the store for 114 years, he decides to hand it over to its insecure, much younger manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman). Not only has Mr Magorium had the store for 114 years, but he is 243 years old, although it's said he doesn't look a day over 200.
I calculate that that makes him just over double the age of Hoffman's character Jack Crabb, in the entertaining 1970 western Little Big Man, in which he played Crabb from his teens to the age of 121. Hoffman's getting good at playing these exceptionally old guys. "You haven't seen Mr Magorium yet," he says, laughing. Did he have to spend hours in the make-up chair before shooting every day? "It's interesting that you ask that," he says. "After I read a script I sit down and talk with the director, to see if we share the same vision or if we can arrive at that. One of the ways you find out is through what you both don't want.
"Very early on I told him that I wore prosthetics for Little Big Manand it took four hours every day before I even went on the set. I know what that produced. It gave a sense of age, but you lost the person beneath the make-up to an extent. I asked Zach if he wanted prosthetics worn in his film, and he said no. And that was the first thing we agreed on.
"We would not try to say this is what a 243-year-old person would look like, as if anyone knew what he would look like. Instead, what we arrived at was not really a make-up thing but a character thing, which was my contribution, I guess. I wanted to be able to deliver someone who has a certain idiosyncratic outrageousness, so that, if you met this person in life, you couldn't argue with him. Whether it works or not we have yet to see. They have a lot of postproduction work to do on it, so it probably won't be out until late next year."
Before Hoffman started work on Stranger than Fiction, he acted in Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which also opens here next month. I mention that Hoffman must be going through the German period of his career, given that both Forster and Tykwer are German. "Marc Forster would resent that," Hoffman says. "He's Swiss." Yes, but he was born in Germany. "Okay, you've nailed him," Hoffman says, laughing. "I'll bring that up with him over dinner tonight."
Perfumeis based on Patrick Süskind's 1985 novel set in 18th- century France. It features the rising British actor Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, described early in the book as "one of the most gifted and abominable personages in a era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages". Born into poverty, Grenouille develops such a highly tuned olfactory sense that his obsession with scent becomes absolute. Hoffman plays a once successful perfumer who takes on Grenouille as an apprentice.
The film has already broken box-office records in Germany. "Thank God, because I think it's the most expensive German film ever made," says Hoffman. "I called Tom Tykwer up after I saw [his film] Run Lola Run. He's a very interesting guy, and again quite young. He was in the middle of shooting another film of his that I love, The Princess and the Warrior. I called from Los Angeles, and I forgot what time it would be where he was. It must have been around two in the morning there, and he was on an all-night shoot, but we wound up talking for about two hours. We didn't actually meet for quite some time, until he called me and he told me he was making Perfume.
"I remembered it from 20 years ago, because everyone wanted to make it into a movie - Steven Spielberg, Milos Forman, Roman Polanki, Brian De Palma. I still haven't seen the finished film, but I loved working with Tykwer. He's indefatigable. He's the opposite of the guy who shoots baskets. His has such intensity, and he'd been preparing Perfume for four years before I came on. And afterwards he did all his own editing and wrote his own score for it. I thought I had a lot of energy until I met him."
However dismissive Hoffman may be about his energy levels, he is exuberant and looks much younger than his age - he will be 70 next August. His career continues to thrive, and it helps that he has never been typecast and is comfortable moving between starring and character roles. And he's never attempted to reinvent himself, as so many other actors have done, or engaged in self-parody.
"But I would reinvent myself if I could," he jokes. As what? "As a sexy leading man. We all would like that, but I don't know how to. I was studying acting with Lee Strasberg when I first came to New York, and one of the first things he said was that there's no such thing as character parts and leading men. They're all characters, every one of them. I never forgot that."
He seems to be doing a little acting on the spot when he expresses surprise at my observation that next year is the 40th anniversary of his breakthrough role, as Benjamin Braddock, the gormless young man seduced by an older woman who happens to be his prospective mother-in-law, Mrs Robinson - memorably played by the late Anne Bancroft, who was just five years older than Hoffman - in The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols.
Shrewdly, Hoffman ensured he would never be typecast when he soon followed that with Midnight Cowboy, in which he played the dishevelled, limping, rasping petty criminal Ratso Rizzo. "It was a plan," Hoffman says proudly. "At that time I was affected by reviews, and I try to become less affected by them all the time. Back then it was said that I was perfectly cast for The Graduate, that Nichols had found someone who was just like Benjamin and that it might not have involved much acting on my part. So I was determined to do something entirely different, and Midnight Cowboycertainly was that."
When Hoffman mentions that Perfumeopens in the US at the end of next month, in time to meet the end-of-year cut-off point for Academy Awards consideration, I remark that he doesn't have to worry about such matters any more, as he has received the best- actor Oscar twice already, for Kramer vs. Kramer, which was made in 1979, and Rain Man, which was made in 1988. And I quote John Banville's recent expression of relief that he no longer needs to fret about the Man Booker Prize, having won it last year.
"It's interesting that he feels that way," Hoffman says. "He's healthier than I am. Maybe we Americans are more problematic. Where's he from?" Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland, I tell him. "Well, there's a difference. You guys are much ahead of us. I remember when [ Jack] Nicholson got the lifetime-achievement award, and he'd already won three Oscars. In the last sentence of his speech he said: 'You ain't seen nothing yet.' "
I mention Peter O'Toole's initial refusal to accept an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement, in 2003, because it might prevent his ever winning the best-actor award, and now he's a front-runner for Venus, which would be his first nomination since 1982, when he was shortlisted as best actor for the seventh time.
"Isn't that terrific for a guy like him?" says Hoffman, who also has collected seven Oscar nominations. "I've heard a lot about his performance in that film. From what you've told me he's going to win. I'll have to call Las Vegas right now and place my bet."
As we are on the subject of Irish actors and writers, I recall hearing that Hoffman has an Irish son-in-law. "Well, you tell me," he says, laughing.
"Seamus Culligan is his name. Does he have a shot? He's American, but with a name like that, and he's got red hair and freckles, you can guess where his roots are. I tease him all the time. He and my daughter Jenna have two children, Gus and Daisy, my first grandchildren, and I tell Seamus that if those two children turn out to have red hair and freckles, I'm kicking him out of the house. He's a terrific guy, a wonderful guy.
"I was just thinking, as we were talking there, that Seamus has never been to Ireland. What a great thing it would be for just the two of us, me and my son-in-law, to go to Ireland. I want us to do that. Where should we go? Maybe we could start with the Dublin Theatre Festival and then go off fishing."
Stranger than Fiction is released on Friday. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer opens on St Stephen's Day
TALES OF HOFFMAN
THE TIGER MAKES OUT Aftersix years of one-off roles in episodic television, Dustin Hoffman makes his cinema debut down the credits of a New York comedy.
THE GRADUATE(1967) The boyish 30-year-old Hoffman plays the virginal Benjamin Braddock, who gets seduced by Mrs Robinson, and gets his first Oscar nomination.
MIDNIGHT COWBOY(1969) The only X-rated movie to win the Oscar for best picture. Hoffman and co-star Jon Voight are both nominated for best actor, but the award goes to an ailing John Wayne.
STRAW DOGS(1971) Hoffman plays a mild-mannered American in Cornwall, where he wreaks startling revenge when his English wife (Susan George) is gang-raped. Director Sam Peckinpah's explicit use of violence prompts outrage.
PAPILLON(1973) Hoffman joins Steve McQueen as a prisoner on Devil's Island in a popular adventure.
LENNY(1974) Hoffman secures his third Oscar nomination, for his searing portrayal of the abrasive comedian Lenny Bruce.
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MENHoffman plays the Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein, with Robert Redford as Bernstein's colleague Bob Woodward, as they break the Watergate story. Even though we know much of the story in advance, the film is as tense as a thriller.
MARATHON MAN(1976) Laurence Olivier gives Hoffman a hard time on screen - in the torture-by-dentistry sequence - and off, when he allegedly responds to Hoffman's method approach with "Try acting, dear boy."
KRAMER VS. KRAMERHoffman and Meryl Streep play the eponymous divorced couple engaged in a bitter battle for child custody. They both win for the first time on Oscar night.
TOOTSIE(1982) Hoffman dazzles in drag in a sharp and highly successful comedy.
RAIN MAN(1988) Hoffman takes his second Oscar, as an autistic man who gives life lessons to his yuppie younger brother (Tom Cruise).
WAG THE DOG(1997) Hoffman collects his seventh best-actor Oscar nomination, as a Hollywood producer who conspires with a spin doctor (Robert De Niro) to fake a war in Albania as a distraction from a White House sex scandal. Hoffman, De Niro and director Barry Levinson met Bill Clinton, who asked what the movie was about. Desperate to change the topic, Hoffman started tap-dancing.
MEET THE FOCKERS(2004) Hoffman and Barbra Streisand join Robert De Niro for the sequel to Meet the Parents. The comedy is crude and obvious, but the film tops the Irish box office for 2005.