Dustin Hoffman interview: "Only half a day of sex"
Let's start by talking about size and relativity. Dustin Hoffman measures exactly 1.66 meters from top to toe, which, as we all agree, is not much for a man. But when he stands in front of you, holding out his hand, "so pleasing to meet you" says and puckering his mouth to that world-famous Dustin Hoffman smile that takes his whole face up to the eyes that can laugh without comment, that's strange may sound, then you have the strange feeling, someone would have pumped these 166 centimeters from the inside and let the whole little man grow. Even if you are towered over half the length of a school ruler, you have the feeling of looking up at him.
Nothing comes from nothing. Dustin Hoffman, now 75 years old, has developed this kind of inner greatness. He definitely belongs in the top ten of the still living movie stars, and also in this ranking he is more ahead than behind. For 45 years, the native Californian has been one of the figureheads of his profession since he achieved his international breakthrough as an actor in 1967 with the "Reifeprüfung". And now, at an age when most people are retired, he makes his debut as a director.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Mr. Hoffman, you are ...
Dustin Hoffman: Wait, I have to say one thing in advance.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: And indeed?
Dustin Hoffman: Now comes some kind of instructions for this conversation: You have to interrupt me. If you ask me a question and let me do it, it will take me half an hour to answer it. I like talking and much, and I think in ellipses - that is, my thoughts will eventually come back to the starting point, and I'll start over. And then...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Okay, stop, understood. You're 75 years old and have done something you've never done in the movie business over the years.
Dustin Hoffman: Exactly. At home we say: Hey's the new kid on the block - I'm the new kid in the neighborhood. Even Clint Eastwood has directed earlier than me.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Did you start now because you no longer feel like making compromises while filming?
Dustin Hoffman: What do you mean?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Well, they are considered difficult. As "pain in the ass", as one who always lets the directors into the work.
Dustin Hoffman: Well, first of all: In any job in film you have to make as many compromises as you do as a director. You have to make an incredible amount of decisions that will spoil what you have imagined. Wings broken? Okay, take a piano. And then you have to louder different actor egos under one hat. Who as a director is uncompromising and does not respond to his team, gets the big problems. Now guess what kind of director said I'm exhausting and a pain in the ass?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: An uncompromising director who did not respond to his team?
Dustin Hoffman: Yes. Because I always wanted the best for my roles and the films. That's why I often get involved. If I do not get strong at work, what then?
The result is always strong movies, Classics that adorn the genre. "Asphalt Cowboy", "Papillon", "Marathon Man", "The Untouchables", "Lenny" - all this is great cinema. Seven times he was nominated for the Oscar, for "Kramer against Kramer" and "Rain Man" he got him. But it says a lot about Dustin Hoffman that he was never too happy to reinvent himself. Hollywood has changed in the last 20 years. Hoffman is nobody who complains about it. He just changes with. And did not have much to do with the character compartment he was at and is home in. "There are not that many drafts for older people," he says. And therefore played in family films like "Hook". Or in popcorn Hollywood comedies, there was the exaggerated "Meet The Fockers" series with Ben Stiller, for example. Because he does not shirk the laws of the film market, this inevitably led to other debuts in old age: At 71 he borrowed for "Kung-Fu Panda" for the first time an animated animal his sonorous, dark voice. In 2011, he did something that would have been completely unthinkable for a world star of his cut a few years ago: he starred in a television series called "Luck," which Hoffman plays as an aging criminal betting godfather freshly released from prison ,
"Quartet," Dustin Hoffman's personal directorial debut, is certainly the most significant of all the projects of recent years.Also because the film he made in England in the fall of 2011 deals with topics that will sooner or later affect him and us all: how can people age with dignity? What to do if a life is nothing but memories of old, better days? And how, dammit, do you manage to lose power and mental freshness?
The focus is on the inhabitants of Beecham House, An old people's home for former artists, standing between gently rolling hills next to lush green English meadows. "There was such a thing in Italy," says Hoffman, "Guiseppe Verdi personally set up a house in Milan in 1899, where singers could grow old with whom fate did not mean so well." There was little in his life Verdi was prouder. "
Some of the home-dwellers in Hoffman's film have their difficulties getting along with age, not being able to live on their own, but most of all, they miss the fame and recognition that life on stage and in the studio brings. All this is particularly true of the former opera diva Jean Horton, who arrives at Beecham House. And it bursts in the middle of the preparations for a gala evening: The house is threatened with closure. And this is what the equally aged and talented musicians want to prevent with a grandiose gala concert. All the better that Jean Horton, played by Maggie Smith, now has a real world star in the house. But Miss Horton, all diva, refuses to perform with her old colleagues. For one thing, because she knows she'll never sound like she used to. And second, because one of the three is her ex-husband Reginald, who still has a lot of rage on her ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: The movie is about love in old age. Is it changing over time?
Dustin Hoffman: Yes and no. For example, I've calmed down, I think now only half the day of sex and not the whole. And I am relaxed in dealing with my wife, with whom I have been married for 32 years. But when it comes to injuries, the patterns stay the same. Just like the irrational things you do then. Oh, weird. I do not always understand that either. You know what? My big ambition is to live until I understand myself.
* THE CASA VERDI
The retirement home for impoverished musicians in Milan, founded in 1899 by Guiseppe Verdi, not only found Dustin Hoffman's interest, but also that of the ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN editors: In February 2005 we received a detailed report about this very special institution. You can read the story at www.ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de/verdi.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Well, let's have a prognosis on when that will be.
Dustin Hoffman: I do not know. I still have the feeling of being at the very beginning. There is so much that I do not know yet. So much to discover.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Many people of your age are running out of energy.
Dustin Hoffman: Not me. I sometimes see this number 75 in front of me and wonder what that has to do with me. I do not like that I'm getting old so fast. But I like to grow old. Whereby: What's old here? Actually, I only felt old when I was 40 years old.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Why?
Dustin Hoffman: At that time I was very unhappily married - my then wife Anne Byrne and I just did not fit together. We got two daughters, for which I am grateful, but actually we have been tortured by this marriage. In addition, I worked like a berserker, also very successful - and yet I have questioned many things. That was a time that cost me a lot of emotional power. I often felt old and worn out.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: When I saw "Quartet", I spontaneously thought: The man deals with his own fears, with his fear of an old age with infirmity and engulfing dementia.
Dustin Hoffman: Interesting. I see in the film that is loud people who want to make the most of their difficult situation. They face their limitations with humor and courage. And they even fall in love and behave like crazy teenagers. Is not it funny how you can look at something and see something completely different than the guy in the chair next to you?
It's fun to talk to Dustin Hoffman. He is facing, open, sincerely interested. ("I have six children, and you? Ah, a son, great, is he studying? Are your parents still alive?"). His hair is still full but not as dark as it used to be, shining like London's late autumn sky in front of the "SoHo Hotel" where the interview is taking place. London is his city, among others - Hoffman alternately lives in his homes in Kensington, New York or Los Angeles. For him, this luxury is not self-evident. "Before I graduated at the age of 30, I've been an actor without success for ten years," says Hoffman, "my income has been consistently below the American definition of the poverty line for years."
Dustin Hoffman knows life, and he is humble enough to accept his changeability.And he has, like the old artists in "Quartet", made the most of his possibilities. He has learned that he was also naive after 45 years in the film business, he says that he has judged director quite different. Probably this work was his final exam, another for him. One that will keep him growing. As if he was not big enough already.
Dustin Lee Hoffman
was born on August 8, 1937 in Los Angeles. Actually, he wanted to be a pianist, but quickly realized that as an actor better get at girls. In 1957 he moved to New York, where he barely got a leg on the ground professionally. At times he formed a WG in Manhattan with his equally ineffective friends and colleagues Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall. He now owns two Oscars and six Golden Globes. He is married for the second time to the lawyer Lisa Gottsegen. Apart from the four children from this marriage, Hoffman has two more from his first marriage. On January 24th, Hoffman's charming directorial debut "Quartet" will be released in our cinemas.
