{"id":904003,"date":"2026-11-03T04:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T04:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/904003\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T04:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T04:26:08","slug":"dustin-hoffman-says-filming-the-graduate-was-a-terrible-experience-due-to-mike-nichols-sadism-dustin-hoffman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/904003\/","title":{"rendered":"Dustin Hoffman says filming The Graduate was \u2018a terrible experience\u2019 due to Mike Nichols\u2019 \u2018sadism\u2019 | Dustin Hoffman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost 60 years after The Graduate was released, Dustin Hoffman<\/a> has revealed that making the 1967 film that launched his career was \u201ca terrible experience\u201d and he felt \u201cimmediately uncomfortable, unworthy\u201d as a Jewish actor playing \u201cthe ultimate Wasp\u201d, Ben Braddock.<\/p>\n

In an essay for the New Yorker<\/a>, drawn from his upcoming memoir Look at Me, which was co-written with New Yorker staff writer Ariel Levy, the 89-year-old actor wrote: \u201cThe Graduate exacerbated all my insecurities from the start.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere I was, playing a starring role in a movie by Mike Nichols<\/a>, who was the director of the moment, but I felt like I had no right to be there. I didn\u2019t even want to try out for the part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman was a successful theatre actor when Nichols expressed interest in him. The director had spent two years casting the lead roles, seeing actors such as Robert Redford before hiring Hoffman as Ben and Katharine Ross as Elaine Robinson.<\/p>\n

Hoffman recalls sitting in hair and makeup for hours with Nichols giving instructions to the makeup artists to change his appearance, including removing his monobrow and commenting on the shape of his nose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember thinking, They\u2019re trying to take the Jew off my face, and it ain\u2019t going to happen. All I wanted to do was go home, to ethnic New York, where I belonged. I knew I was no leading man. I knew my place,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Hoffman said Nichols was \u201can entirely different person\u201d when it came to shooting the film after weeks of rehearsals: he was difficult to read, his mood was changeable and he was \u201cfrequently sour\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike was irritable with everyone, but with me a certain sadism seemed to creep in,\u201d Hoffman wrote, revealing he was slapped 27 times by Ross for a scene that didn\u2019t even make the final cut. \u201cHe made us do 27 takes,\u201d Hoffman wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scene has Benjamin run into Elaine\u2019s room, soaking wet from the rain, to tell her that he\u2019s had an affair with an older woman; within seconds, Elaine realises the woman is her mother. Mike just kept telling Katharine to hit me, to hit me harder.<\/p>\n

\u201cKatharine worried she would hurt me, and I told her, \u2018I\u2019m OK. Just don\u2019t hit my ear.\u2019 Unfortunately, she missed a few times. I was dizzy by the end of that day, and Mike didn\u2019t even use the slap in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, Hoffman punctured an eardrum while filming an underwater scene where he was wearing a scuba suit in a swimming pool.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came up for air after a few takes, there was blood trickling out of my ear. Between all the slapping during the previous day and all the water pressure at the bottom of the pool, I\u2019d punctured an eardrum,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Hoffman shared that his co-star Anne Bancroft, who played his older lover Mrs Robinson, fainted during a scene on a hot day and \u201cshe had to be resuscitated with oxygen\u201d. Hoffman himself was made to repeat a scene in which he ran from his car to the church to declare his love for Elaine until he thought he\u2019d pass out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did it over and over and over again, until I was absolutely trashed from exhaustion and dehydration. I remember lying down in the grass in front of the church because I thought I was going to lose consciousness,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Making The Graduate, which was nominated for seven Oscars and won best director at the 40th Academy Awards, turned out to be \u201ca terrible experience\u201d for a film that \u201cchanged my life\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole time, I felt Mike was angry at me, either because I was doing something wrong or because he had realised what everybody else already knew, that he had miscast the lead in his film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman reflected that six decades on, the film was something of \u201ca self-portrait\u201d for director Nichols, who came to the US from Germany in 1939 as a young Jewish boy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was looking for an alter ego \u2013 that\u2019s why Benjamin had taken years to cast, and maybe that\u2019s why he was so hard on me. I was a stand-in, there to absorb Mike\u2019s own self-loathing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman\u2019s memoir Look at Me will be published on 10 November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost 60 years after The Graduate was released, Dustin Hoffman has revealed that making the 1967 film that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-904003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}