Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman (1937- ), American stage and film actor. Born in Los Angeles, Hoffman began his career in off-Broadway productions in New York in the 1960s, and in 1967 he caught the attention of film and stage director Mike Nichols, who cast him as a naive 20-year-old seduced by a middle-aged woman, played by Anne Bancroft, in the highly popular film The Graduate, which catapulted him to stardom. Two years later, Hoffman gave a moving performance as the down-and-out vagrant Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy.

For his performance as a father trying to keep custody of his son in Kramer Vs Kramer (1979), Hoffman won his first Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Actor. His portrayal of an unemployed actor who becomes a soap opera heroine in the comedy Tootsie (1982) led to an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Hoffman returned to the stage in 1983 in the role of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, on Broadway, and again in 1989, playing the role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, by Shakespeare, in London. In 1985 the Broadway production of Death of a Salesman was filmed by Volker Schlöndorff, winning Hoffman both an Emmy and a Golden Globe award. In 1989 he won a second Oscar for his portrayal of an autistic savant in the artful and commercially successful 1988 film Rain Man. Hoffman’s other films include Little Big Man (1970), Papillon (1973), Lenny (1974), All the President’s Men (1976), Dick Tracy (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Outbreak (1995), American Buffalo (1996), Sleepers (1996), Wag the Dog (1997), Sphere (1998), and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). He also starred in the John Grisham thriller Runaway Jury (2003); Finding Neverland (2004), about J. M. Barrie; and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), from the novel by Patrick Süskind.