(You’re welcome, Al Pacino.) The comic timing (listen to the way he sells that “You’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you, Mrs. He not only turns Braddock into a fully realized, flesh-and-blood representation of generational anxieties the 29-year-old also helps tear down the notion that short, ethnic and prominently proboscis-ized guy could not be a leading man or a sex symbol. From the first time we see him gliding through LAX to that final what-do-we-do-now scene as he and Katherine Ross ride off into an uncertain future, Hoffman reminds you that the right actor, with the right part at the right time, can change everything. Nevertheless, Nichols persisted – and the rest is history. In a 2015 interview, he put it more bluntly: “I was the Jewish kid … and this was not a Jewish part.” Hoffman managed to get a look at the source material, Charles Webb’s novel about a college graduate who has an affair with an older woman, and told the filmmaker that the blonde, blue-eyed Benjamin Braddock was not a good fit. Hoffman had been making his bones as an actor for a few years when Mike Nichols caught him in an Off-Broadway play after contacting him, the former-comedian-turned-director mentioned he had the young man in mind for a part in his new movie. Is it safe to say the star is a national treasure? Yes, it’s safe. So in honor of the man entering eighth decade, we’re looking back on what we consider the 20 essential Dustin Hoffman roles – from his Oscar-winning performances to small-screen one-offs like his memorable Simpsons guest appearance. It’s an impressive, incredible back catalog. But in the nearly 50 years since that one-two punch, he’s given us some of the most memorable turns in American movies: Watergate muckrakers and Judge Wapner-loving savants, existential detectives and enraged divorcees, psychopathic gangsters and profane stand-ups, two-bit crooks and first-rate schnooks. He helped change the game.Īnd had Hoffman only played that part and Ratso Rizzo, the downtown scuzzball of Midnight Cowboy, he’d still have carved out a small corner in film history. Character actors could become movie stars. But after that movie, short, ethnic and handsome performers could be considered leading men.

Yes, the movie became a cultural touchstone and a classic, turning the then–30-year-old into a sensation almost overnight.

Happy 80th birthday, Dustin Hoffman! From the moment he first made his dent on the public consciousness as Benjamin Braddock, the confused young man/symbol of the generation-gap Sixties of Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, he helped signal a sea change in screen acting.

Dennis franz chabad