Dustin Hoffman names the best directors he ever worked with: “I prefer those kinds”
Obviously, the best actors are more often than not going to end up working with the best directors. Dustin Hoffman neatly fits that criteria and collaborated with many of the industry’s finest filmmakers, but it could have been many more if he hadn’t been so prone to rejecting offers.
He’s been around long enough and experienced more than enough success to guarantee regrets aren’t a thing he’ll carry around, but Hoffman nonetheless missed out on the chance to collaborate with some incredible auteurs in movies that would go on to become cinematic touchstones.
Hoffman declined the opportunity to be cast in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, although it’s easy to see why he didn’t think the script suited his persona and abilities. Robert De Niro and Travis Bickle are inseparable, and it’s impossible to imagine the star of The Graduate playing the part.
The two-time Academy Award winner also resisted the overtures of Federico Fellini, turned down three Steven Spielberg pictures in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Always, and Schindler’s List, and couldn’t sanction relocating to Europe to team up with Ingmar Bergman on The Touch.
He eventually teamed with Spielberg on Hook, but for a while, the most successful director in the business viewed Hoffman as the one who kept getting away. He still worked with his fair share of all-timers, though, and three stand out in the star’s mind as his favourites.
After keeping him at arm’s length for so long, Spielberg ended up as one of them, funnily enough. “Spielberg is extremely generous,” he told That Shelf, which might have been partially derived from his perseverance in finally convincing him to sign on for one of his films.
Wag the Dog, Sphere, and Rain Man‘s Barry Levinson was another Hoffman “loved working with,” but the filmmaker who launched the relative unknown’s career into the stratosphere and gave him the platform to announce himself as a generational talent in the making was the recipient of the most wide-ranging and adoring praise.
“Mike Nichols was wonderful,” he said of the mastermind behind The Graduate. “It was 100 days of shooting, but it was a month of rehearsals. Starting from zero on a soundstage with a tape like you do in a play. You can’t do that today because it’s like, ‘We’re not going to be paying for the cinematographer and the art director and all of these other people’s salaries if they’re not shooting.'”
It could have been the first time he shared the screen with close friend and former roommate Gene Hackman, too, only for the latter to be fired from the cast. Still, it was a star and career-making outing for Hoffman, which is precisely why Nichols gained the most celebration.
How would he define the perfect creative partner? Somebody who keeps it loose, keeps it real, and encourages authenticity; “I prefer that, and I prefer those kinds of directors.”
