Dustin Hoffman says filming The Graduate was ‘a terrible experience’ due to Mike Nichols’ ‘sadism’ — SkimNews
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- Dustin Hoffman called making the 1967 film The Graduate "a terrible experience" even though it launched his career and received seven Oscar nominations, saying he felt "immediately uncomfortable, unworthy" as a Jewish actor playing Ben Braddock, the "ultimate Wasp."
- Mike Nichols spent two years casting the lead roles and considered Robert Redford before choosing Hoffman as Ben and Katharine Ross as Elaine Robinson; Hoffman later said Nichols was looking for an alter ego and that he was there to absorb the director’s self-loathing.
- Hoffman recalled sitting for hours in hair and makeup while Nichols instructed artists to remove his monobrow and comment on his nose; he thought they were "trying to take the Jew off my face."
- Katharine Ross was instructed by Nichols to slap Hoffman harder for 27 takes on a scene left out of the final film; Hoffman said a "certain sadism seemed to creep in," leaving him dizzy after he had asked her not to hit his ear.
- Dustin Hoffman punctured an eardrum the next day while filming an underwater scene in a scuba suit in a swimming pool, with blood trickling from his ear; he linked it to the repeated slapping and water pressure.
- Anne Bancroft fainted during a scene on a hot day and had to be resuscitated with oxygen.
- Look at Me will be published on 10 November, with the New Yorker essay drawn from the memoir Hoffman co-wrote with Ariel Levy.
Why it matters: Readers and film historians gain a more complicated account of the seven-Oscar-nominated film when Hoffman’s memoir arrives on 10 November. His first-person account shifts attention from Nichols’s Best Director win to the injuries Hoffman sustained and the insecurity he felt while playing Ben Braddock.
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