Robert Redford’s long movie career included roles in Barefoot in the Park, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Way We Were, All the President’s Men, and an Oscar-nominated run in The Sting. But the beloved actor, who died on Sept. 16 at age 89, once pursued a famous role that he couldn’t get—because he was too good-looking.
In 1967, Redford very much wanted to star in the film The Graduate, which was directed by Mike Nichols, whom he knew from his Broadway days.
Redford auditioned for the lead role of Benjamin Braddock opposite Candice Bergen, but Nichols immediately rejected him for the part of the awkward college graduate. During a screening event in 2009, Nichols revealed that he turned Redford down for the role during a pool game.
“I said, ‘You were wonderful, but you can’t play this, you could never play a loser in a million years. He said, ‘Of course I could.’ I said, ‘No, you can’t, I’m looking at you. You cannot possibly play a loser,’” Nichols recalled telling Redford, per the Huffington Post.
Nichols also spoke about his rejection of Redford at a 2003 screening of The Graduate, according to Vanity Fair. “I said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser.’ And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser.’ And I said, ‘Okay, have you ever struck out with a girl?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wasn’t joking,” Nichols recalled.
Dustin Hoffman, then 29, ultimately scored the role as Braddock, with Katharine Ross playing his love interest, Elaine Robinson, and Anne Bancroft as his character’s secret lover, Mrs. Robinson.
If Redford was too handsome to play Benjamin Braddock, Hoffman had the opposite problem.
In a profile for Life magazine, Hoffman noted that when he had to screen test with Ross, he thought, “A girl like that would never go for a guy like me in a million years.” Ross agreed, admitting that when she first met the actor, he “looked about 3 feet tall …so dead serious, so humorless, so unkempt,” and she thought filming with him would be “a disaster.”
Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross. (Photo by Embassy Pictures/Getty Images)Embassy Pictures/Getty Images
In a 2015 interview with The Canadian Press, Hoffman called Nichols “courageous” for hiring him for The Graduate. “As far as I’m concerned, Mike Nichols did a very courageous thing casting me in a part that I was not right for, meaning I was Jewish,” the actor said. “In fact, many of the reviews were very negative. … I was called ‘big-nosed’ in the reviews, ‘a nasal voice.’”
It all turned out great for Nichols, who won an Academy Award for Best Director for the film, and Hoffman, who received an Oscar nod for Best Actor for The Graduate.
This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 20, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.